Rant-Space

[Fix] Firefox Going Aero Basic

2010-09-07T20:48:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone, haven't written in my blog for a long time, and while I've had other things going on, it's purely down to procrastination. However, that's going to change, and I'm back with a fix for an annoying issue for Firefox 3.x and higher.

Ever notice that when you're doing flash intensive stuff in Firefox, that the Aero bar at the top will go back to basic, and you'll be unable to actually use your min,max, close buttons? Yeah, I have too, and the fix isn't well publicized at all. Mozilla surely knows about this because it seems to be a somewhat widespread issue, yet they haven't fixed it in their latest beta of Firefox 4 (Beta 5). Well here is the fix for you to finally put an end to that annoying bug.

Go to About:Config and click "I'll be careful, I promise!"

Search for "dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll"

You'll see it's set to True, set it to False and restart Firefox.

Hopefully now your browser's title bar won't be crippled just because you use flash. :D

Poor Neglected Blog + Geforce 7600 GS Black Out Fix

2009-12-14T20:56:00.004-05:00

Haven't written here, probably because I haven't had anything to write about. I guess I should keep things up, and write about a few fixes that I've discovered with the Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS video card with Windows XP.

Currently, the latest Nvidia Forceware driver set will cause some instability with the Geforce 7600GS video card, with symptoms involving the screen blacking out during AVI playback with FFDShow, and gameplay in Left 4 Dead, The Sims 3, and World of Warcraft. I went google hunting to try and find a solution for the problem, and found a suggestion telling me to install a two year old driver set Forceware 93.71, which I will provide a link below. Be sure to completely remove any trace of the newer driver set before you install these drivers, something that'll save you headaches in the future.

Ever since I installed these drivers, which date back to late 2006, I haven't had a single black screen or instability issue, which is pretty bad on Nvidia's side, as it shows the lack of quality in the upkeep of older hardware. I cannot tell if this issue appears on the Geforce 7600GT, and if you get any video issues at all with the 7600 GT then it appears this effects both GPUs.

Nvidia Forceware 93.71

Microsoft Windows 7 Blog Spotlight

2009-08-21T10:57:00.002-04:00

So I sit here, early in the morning, and notice that one of my friends was featured on Microsoft’s Windows 7 spotlight, congrats to him by the way. So I wonder, how did he manage this feat, and I learned that Microsoft has a Clubhouse thing going on. Where you write large articles in the clubhouse and get the opportunity to be featured on their main Windows 7 website.

While it features a pre-approval sign up, which automatically made me think back to my not so friendly articles referring to Microsoft’s failures with Vista, I decided to press forward. Then I stopped dead in my tracks when a friend mentioned to me that Microsoft will not approve a blogger that has had negative posts about Microsoft and about a dozen little red flags popped up with little plinking noises. “Wait a damn minute.”, I think to myself, as I stare at the About Me section of the sign up process, “Why does it matter if I wrote some negative articles about Microsoft?”. Well, I soon realized that the Clubhouse community was a giant advertising campaign that Microsoft is cleverly using their Clubhouse members to deploy.

Don’t get me wrong, the articles are top-notch, and of great quality, which saddens me since they’re basically being used as pawns to promote Windows 7, but look at the elements here. You have several hundred users, vying for that coveted prize of a gift certificate, of which of course Microsoft will place on their main website. Now you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Microsoft isn’t going to post potentially negative articles on their main website. So while the articles are good, they’re horribly, horribly biased, and it discredits the writes in general, who I think don’t even realize their being used to advertise Windows 7.

Monitor Woes, & Office 2010

2009-08-06T18:35:00.002-04:00

Well, in an odd twist, my monitor decided to randomly fix itself, although I'm certain that the fix won't hold, and I'm just buying time until I can buy a monitor and hardware upgrade later this month. So, Windows 7 finally became available to MSDN & Technet, so some of those lucky individuals will be able to upgrade to Windows 7, and activate fully. Personally I've been able to activate my copy of Windows 7 x64 after installing it last night. Originally I was intending to upgrade once I got my new hardware upgrades, but my acceptance into the Office 2010 Technical Preview threw a wrench in my plans, and rather than installing and setting up, as well as activating Office 2010 and then having to reformat and lose some information, as well as having to activate again, I would just install it early, set up my email accounts in Outlook and activate my copy of Office 2010.

Posting to blogs via Microsoft Word as far as I know might not be a new feature, but I've been able to accomplish this in MS Word 2010, and absolutely love it, everything in the Windows Live suite, aside from Messenger, has been replaced by this Office suite, Writer has been replaced by Word, with it's blog posting features, and Live Mail has been replaced by Outlook, although the fact that Outlook strips my web side inbox clean when it downloads new mail, and Live Mail didn't do this, is aggravating to say the least. If I ever get over my massive case of lazy, I'll write up a review of the suite, complete with screenshots, but for now, I'm focusing on my hardware upgrades and getting this sudden wave of hardware failures behind me.

Fried Monitor + Testing Out Blogger Buddy

2009-07-27T15:59:00.001-04:00

Right now, I'm sitting on a 15" Sony Trinitron CRT. Very old, this monitor is easily going into it's late teens. I'm also sitting here testing out a new gadget called Blogger Buddy, for Windows Vista and Windows 7. What Blogger Buddy does, is it allows you to post to your blog, from the gadget, a complete writer, and blog monitor. Fairly impressed with it, you can find it from the link below.

Blogger Buddy

Some HTML knowledge might be required to get around the link posting bits, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

Back up and running

2009-07-21T23:06:00.001-04:00

The card finally arrived Monday and I was able to install it and get my PC up with little fuss, thank goodness it was the video card.

Fried Graphics Card

2009-07-13T15:16:00.002-04:00

Well about a week ago, I was sitting at my PC, playing Counter-Strike Source, when all of a sudden, poof. Poof in a non-descriptive term, as the events that unfolded in front of my ever widening eyes was a nice colorful flash of polygons screaming as they run away from my character model as other polygons thrash about in a spiked explosive glory. In all my years of playing PC games, I never once had a graphics card die on me with such velocity. This is due to my almost OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), of PC maintenance behavior. Dusting once every two weeks, temperature monitoring, keeping up to date on my drivers and so on. I guess it was just meant to be, although the polygons leaving my character model, leaving a wire frame skeleton underneath was entertaining, the card completely fried, leaving Windows 7 running happily along in the background as if nothing happened, even to the point of still playing my music in Winamp.

So over the next few days I looked over my options, tried to get ahold of Brainwave, they happily told me that my warranty is out of date, and there was nothing they could do, but possibly contact the manufacturer (eVGA) for a replacement as they usually go out of their way to help their customers. So I call evga, the guy was very friendly, he told me my options, and even though the card was out of date, and I never registered at their website, he set me up for a one time replacement warranty, and initiated an RMA. I walk up to the local Ship-It store, and send the card, adorned with bubble wrap, for a whole $13.00 over to eVGA in their Californian based company. Took five days to reach them, so with constant watching of the Fedex tracker, I waited patiently, even though they are pretty lax about updating their shipping tracker.

Thankfully, due to my OCDness, my 10 year old PC runs perfectly fine, and I can use that to listen to music, browse the web, and chat. As well as post to my blog, which I will do right up to the point where I can get my hands on Windows 7 RTM and post my little review on that as I did with Vista. Time will tell when I can actually get my PC up and running, it's just sitting there, looking all sad and pathetic, if a computer can look as such, with a gaping hole where it's GPU is supposed to be, poor thing.

Windows 7

2009-07-04T12:51:00.002-04:00

This might be my first pro-Microsoft post in a long time, that’s because for a long time I was disappointed with the Windows Operating System. Well, disappointed no longer, I really love what Microsoft has done with Windows 7. The OS as a whole appears very light, and agile, with comparative speeds to Windows XP, and for a new OS to have comparative speeds to an almost nine year old OS is speechless to say the least. While I still have a few remaining disappointments with Windows 7, it likely will not change my decision to get the OS and upgrade to it full time, as I already am running it full time and at this point, look forward to installing the final product.

What I’ll clear out of the way right here, I run the latest leaked builds, and I believe the best feedback for Microsoft and part of the reason Microsoft’s been able to refine their product down to this little beauty, is the blogosphere, the Windows Enthusiast Forums, and constant feedback from fans of the OS. The build I’m running is 7264, which is on the RTM branch headed towards gold code.

I’m sure anyone who has been following closely knows what the UI looks like, new taskbar, with the familiar Aero effects with minor tweaks here and there. I won’t cover much of the basic desktop UI changes, so I’ll head right to the main reason why I love this OS, it’s performance.

The above picture is of my remote desktop session into my older machine running Windows 7 7264, basic ram usage is incredible, and lower than that of it’s predecessor, Windows Vista. It scales the ram cache to ensure peak performance, but does it within reason to the maximum amount of ram found on the OS. So performance on older machines usually isn’t a worry. I set this up as a backup system allowing me to access the machine remotely in order to perform backup of system files to a dedicated partition in the computer, independent from the OS.

Another thing that really gets me, and I know this was available in previous versions, but this is my first encounter with it. Remote Desktop’s aero effects. As you can see in the above screenshot, there is no graphics card installed, as there are no S3ProSavage drivers available for Windows 7, another testament to how old the PC in question is. However, despite this setback, Remote Desktop brings in the graphics processing power of the machine viewing the Remote Desktop Connection to draw full blurred but shadowless aero effects, which is an added plus to usability of the remote connection. This remote connection was made on a local wired LAN and will surely differ for other people using Wireless or connecting via the internet.

I honestly and truly believe that Microsoft is attempting to make up for it’s past mistakes with Vista and does it quite well with Windows 7, this OS can run on such a large number of hardware configurations that any PC with at least 1GB of RAM should upgrade to this OS to take advantage of the latest Microsoft has to offer, even if you don’t get the fancy Aero effects, because let’s face it guys, XP is starting to age to the point were it’s nearly obsolete.

I’m back, dealing with Windows Headaches

2009-06-26T08:21:00.001-04:00

First, I am the type of computer user that I want a decent experience with my OS, the OS is key and always the forefront of any computer. That’s why I used XP for so long, it had it’s faults, but I’ve been able to handle them with a decent amount of patience. Well, my experience with Windows XP has been soured by nVidia’s lack of intelligent driver support for the OS. It’s terrible, random black screens, completely broken game support, and so on. Now I find myself on the latest RTM release of Windows, which unfortunately is Vista.

Where do I start with Vista. Wow, it is quite possibly the most broken release of Windows I have ever seen, and this is coming from a person who has used Windows Me for a solid three years straight. Broken icons, broken networking, broken game support, and random crashes. Also the fact that I’m dealing with a failing cable modem, and a failing cable ISP. (Comcast)

All I want is an OS that works, an OS that actually OPERATES! Is it too much to ask to have a decent experience with my PC? What do I have to do? Go to Linux in order to have an OS that I can use? Linux isn’t the greatest OS either, and offers a worse experience than Vista, with laggy graphical support for my video card, laggy disk access, random breaks, interface inconsistencies.

At this point I’m probably going to have to start saving up for a Mac, as it appears that I am simply too demanding of my computer, and Windows is a failure of an operating system.

Windows Live Messenger + Firefox + Win 7 = fixed

2009-05-13T21:19:00.001-04:00

According to James Ross at Mozilla’s Bugzilla, you can prevent Windows Live Messenger 2009 (14) from popping up when minimizing Firefox by throwing this very simple fix into Firefox’s About:Config

Type About:Config in your Firefox address bar, click past the warning.

Right click the list, choose New –> Boolean.

Input config.trim_on_minimize into the Window that pops up, then set it to true.

Open Search Windows 7 RC Compatibility

2009-05-08T17:29:00.001-04:00

Well, they randomly changed the way OpenSearch works in Windows 7 RC (7100), I’ve narrowed down the problem, and I will begin updating all of the OpenSearch scripts one by one and post when they are completed.

-Update-

They are all up to date, and should work just fine in Windows 7 RC Build 7100. If the sidebar doesn’t load, which it seems to take a while doing, you can visit the link below.

Rant-Space’s OpenSearch Listing

Microsoft Releases Windows 7 RC

2009-05-05T08:04:00.001-04:00

If you’re reading this, go grab a copy. Personally I’m anxious to try out Virtual XP, the official one from Microsoft, not the one that hosed my install.

Download – Microsoft’s Windows 7 RC Website

It’s been a rough few..

2009-05-01T10:41:00.001-04:00

Wow, talk about a crappy flu season. I’ve been hit with an upper respiratory flu bug, now I got hit by a stomach flu, however that’s the only symptoms I have at the moment. I don’t know, or think I have the swine flu (H1N1 2009), but as I’m being hit that badly, I might avoid testing as to not be the first to curse the state of Maryland by possibly having the bug, despite the fact that I contracted this flu from someone who has had contact with someone from Mexico, and was stupidly sick, and stupidly studying while being sick.

Anyway, onto Windows 7 stuff, this will be my third install of Windows 7 in the month of April. First one was a single boot of build 7077, then 7100 got released and I upgraded to that, sporked the install, and had to reinstall from the disk. Don’t let that deter you, the OS is very solid for being a release candidate, but it’s got that slight issue of being silently incompatible with some applications. Meaning if you install something, and it doesn’t complain about compatibility right away, but still remains incompatible in some respects, it could hose your install. So if you do decide to try Windows 7, BACK UP YOUR DATA! You will seriously regret it if you don’t.

I honestly don’t have any DVD-Rs available to me, so what I did, and might be a viable install option for some of you, rather than following the upgrade path. Install Windows XP, don’t update, don’t install drivers, just install that OS as a base to work off of, I installed from my Windows XP Pro SP2 disk, which took me about 10 to 15 minutes from setup to desktop. Then, on a fresh install of XP, I extracted the contents of the Windows 7 DVD by using 7zip, extracted the contents of the .iso to a folder on the desktop.

I then ran setup.exe, and chose Custom Install once it gave me that option, I then chose the partition where Windows XP is installed, and let it do it’s thing. 15 minutes later I had a full fresh install of Windows 7, with all of XP’s files sitting in a folder on the root of my drive labeled Windows.old. Delete if you’d like, its just wasting space as it’s only XP’s files.

Good job CNBC

2009-04-20T20:45:00.002-04:00

In a CNBC Money installment where they talk about what the better value between PCs and Macs. I’ll let you guys take a look at the video, and make the decisions for yourself.

Alright, pay attention to the graphic on the bottom, this shows the prices of Software on the PC, of which I will include free alternatives that are just as good, if not BETTER.

Original ~ Alternative

Norton Anti-Virus - $50/yr(?) ~ Anti-Vir

Multimedia Software (Vague?) ~ Filehippo Multimedia

Photoshop ~ Gimp

Video Editing ~ Virtualdub

Music Software ~ Winamp

Geek Squad(Are you serious?!) ~ Neowin, AeroXP,

I list those forums because 9/10 times, posting a problem over there will result in some pretty good help. I have a half-arsed list because it’s a half-arsed argument by that toon over at CNBC. While you can’t have the same experience on a PC that you can on a Mac, being used to a PC will probably not fair you so well on the Mac side, and you’re best just sticking with a PC. If you are looking for a PC, give a website called Newegg a try, it should have what you’re looking for, with a reasonable price tag.

Freed Up Some Time

2009-04-19T21:10:00.001-04:00

A lot of positive changes, first of all, I beat my gaming addiction to CS:Source, that was eating a lot of my time up. Upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows Vista, and I’m happy as heck with it, meaning I’m totally back into the cutting edge Windows related stuff. With my freed up time I can start writing to my blog on a more regular basis, HOPEFULLY, but not 100% on this, with some more reviews.

Trying to beat a nasty flu bug, with hammering over my head on my roof as the owner of the apartment building started finding random holes in the roof, so he goes and buys some wood, and some new tiles, and begins his work. For about five to six hours all I hear is electric saws and hammering, all with a huge migraine.

Feedback

2009-03-14T23:21:00.001-04:00

Wow… I’m still receiving feedback from the posts about Windows Live Mail & Gmail, and Outlook 2007 & Gmail. I’m REALLY glad that it works so well for everyone and the positive feedback really helps lift my spirits. Thank you so much for leaving the feedback and letting me know that you’re all able to get it configured properly. :)

Refractor for Prism, Create Web Apps

2009-03-06T09:13:00.007-05:00

Ever want to get to your web based services just by double clicking an icon on your desktop? Honestly that’s one of the things that I’ve always wanted out of a web service like Gmail or Twitter, being able to access it in it’s own little application, from an icon on your Windows Desktop. Well with this little Firefox add-on, now you can. You’ll need the latest non-beta release of Firefox, which at the time of writing this, is 3.0.6. You’ll also need to install a Firefox extension called Refractor for Prism.

Refractor for Prism Download

Mozilla Firefox Download

After you install Refractor for Prism, go to your Tools menu in Firefox and choose Convert Website to Application. You’ll be presented with a little dialog, there you can choose various options like making a systray icon, desktop icon and whether or not you want toolbar access in your new custom web based application. The usual option I choose is to have desktop icon access to my web application so that I can easily double click it.

As you can see the frontpage of Neowin might not be the best choice, but you’re able to choose whatever you want, there really is no limit to what you can do with this little addon, and it for me it’s certainly one of the “must install” on any new Firefox installation that I do.

(CNN Live Video Web Application created in Refractor for Prism)

Comcast Rant Part 2

2009-03-05T18:56:00.001-05:00

Being as I’m a jerk about high latency and problems with my ISP, hell, that’s what made me change from a terrible ISP to a better ISP, Cavalier Telephone (Which is abysmal, don’t even think about signing up with them), to Comcast (Not as abysmal). The fact that they can’t seem to figure out what’s going on, and despite a tech coming out, three phone calls, maintenance checking it out, claiming they will “Fix it tomorrow”, the problem persists. With Comcast being one of the only viable options for having an ISP aside from dialup at the moment, and even that isn’t too viable, I’m stuck, bent over a barrel.

I’ve had latency issues before with Comcast, all of which seemed to have been fixed on their own, and all about a year and a half into my subscription. How this is happening again, and where to even look for an answer to these issues is completely bewildering, and overwhelming. I’d like to consider myself tech savvy, but I will admit that I’m completely clueless to anything networking, it’s my Achilles heel. I’d be able to deal with it, if for instance, it wasn’t the fact that I play Counter-Strike Source competitively in a clan with possible TWL, CAL, even CPL perspectives. Having a high latency and an unreliable ISP is a killer combination to anything fast game play related.

So why in the hell does Comcast not train their employees to better deal with these issues? I’ve spoken with several techs and all of them tell me that they don’t have the training that high end maintenance and tech support have.

“It makes us look like idiots when we run into problems we do not know how to fix.” – One Comcast Tech

Again I’ll give it time, I’ll keep chatting with Comcast. Squeaky oil gets the grease, so says several people, including my late Grandfather. I’ll continue to write rants, posts, and info as I get them, keeps me from sitting here festering with irritation.

The Comcast Rant

2009-03-05T09:25:00.001-05:00

I’m a current Comcast subscriber for a couple of years now, and everything’s been going pretty smoothly, until a few days ago. We’re talking latency issues, ping times shooting up into the thousands, loss of connectivity and so on. So I decided to give Comcast a call, they scheduled a tech for the next day, and he swapped out the modem, which seemed to fix the problem. That is until the next day, it started up again. Latency shot through the rough, online gaming was impossible, browsing websites became a chore.

So then I decide to go back to an earlier idea of the problem, a bad node. Come to find out that hop/node in my trace route test that reports 100% packet loss, according to a few people over at DSLReports.com, is supposed to be there. I’m thinking to myself, alright, I did a trace route test on network-tools.com, and noticed that it timed out on hop 11, right before hitting my IP/Modem. The latency difference between hop 10, and hop 12, was about 200ms. Now if it’s supposed to be there, why is it that the trace route test reports back a hundred or two ms difference in the ping, and isn’t that difference for DOCSIS 3.0, and not DOCSIS 2.0, which I’m now currently on. Oh and the kicker here, I was on DOCSIS 1.0, until they swapped out the modem, which is DOCSIS 2.0 compliant.

Don’t get me wrong, tech support is nice, and it’s nice talking to an understanding individual, even though the problem persisted. I haven’t encountered the latency drop yet today, but it’s still early, and I’m hoping that it will eventually go away on it’s own. Regardless, Comcast is looking into whether or not for sure that HOP that’s reporting a 100% packet loss should really be there or not.

Comcast is already at stretched capacity and the storm on the east coast probably didn’t help much, as other people I’ve spoken to up and down the north east, report the same problem. Will Comcast fix this? Who knows, but if it persists for over three months, I’m switching providers, maybe even going back to Verizon.

I’m not dead. :P

2009-02-20T17:55:00.001-05:00

After that VERY Anti-Microsoft post, I went idle, hopefully it didn’t make those few readers that I do have think that I got shoved into a van with Washington State license plates and got scooted off somewhere. I’m still here, and being as I finally found a pocket of free time, I’ll get back to Twitter, and Blogger and all the little things I used to do.

Microsoft Windows, and It’s Failures

2009-01-15T22:54:00.003-05:00

If you are currently running Windows XP, you are in a good spot, the very patched, almost, but not quite perfect OS. Vista is probably the worst Windows based OS I have ever used, and I’ve been a Windows user for quite some time, starting at Windows For Workgroups 3.11. I cannot stress how completely terrible Vista is, from the lockups, to the unresponsiveness. To the little nagging bugs, like the breaking of icons that occur not only in Vista but in 7, amongst many others.

So let me stress the fact here.. Do NOT upgrade to Windows Vista, no matter what, trust me, if you do, you will most likely run into an issue here and there. Also, that statement was meant for the “Average Joe User”, not the Beta Tester, or the Microsoft fanboys that frequent many technology enthusiast websites.

As for Windows 7, it depends on how the product is, but it's shaping up to be Windows Vista Second Edition, mainly due to the fact that very little has changed in the UI, a lot of features have been added, yes, the superbar, cool. The various addon things that save me hours of downloading and installing, it’s all packed right in, and the fact that it automatically detects and installs my Lexmak X1300 printer. I like it, but I must retract my statement from before, it’s most certainly not a new XP.

The problem that faces Microsoft with Windows 7 in my opinion, is that it reeks too much of Vista. It looks like it, it carries the same Windows Flag logo, and unless they change that at the last minute, people are going to be confused, and again, I know most of the people in the technology enthusiast community will KNOW that it’s Windows 7, and not Windows Vista Second Edition.

If you have an open mind and plenty of patience, how about you ditch Microsoft completely, and buy yourself a Mac, or if your brave enough, take a look into Linux, they have a great community, and will go out of their way to help you when you have a problem. You might not understand everything they say, but if you let them know that you don’t have a PHD in Geek, they’ll slow down and be patient with you.

Here are a few places to purchase a Non-Windows system.

Apple

Dell based Ubuntu Machines – Very VERY well priced desktops

Ubuntu – Convert your Windows machines into Ubuntu desktops.

Ubuntu has incredible hardware support and installation is very easy, if you want to get used to Ubuntu, no need to get rid of Windows. All you need to do is burn Ubuntu to a CD and run it in Windows, it’ll give you an option in Autoplay called “Install Ubuntu Inside Windows” and it’ll create it’s own isolated virtual hard drive and install Ubuntu to it, creating an entry into your bootloader for you, and installing everything for you automatically. Then when you are done with Ubuntu, simply uninstall it like a program from Windows in Add/Remove Programs.

It might be hard, but together, we can prove that there is indeed a life after Windows.

Yes I know that the details into why Vista and 7 are so bad are lacking, this was more of a ranting than a facts Vs. opinions post, I'll write more sooner or later as to what the main issues are, but if you look around my blog enough you'll be able to piece together my absolute disdain for Vista.

As for Windows 7, I do admit it's a step in the right direction, however if you glance at it, it just seems like a rush and patch up job to try and rescue their abysmal Windows product. Who knows, maybe it'll get better later down the road, but at the moment it is not convincing me to upgrade. Also another frustration is the lack of the CLASSIC taskbar, not the superbar's small icon view, but the taskbar in general. The Superbar that replaced it is cumbersome, unintuitive, and bulky. When your superbar actually fills up, with icons mind you, not just active icons, it creates this downward/upward icon infront of the system tray. Of which you must click up and down in order to switch between tasks. Now how is that any better than the regular taskbar, that managed, despite it's age, to handle many open tasks, while having a quicklaunch.

Also, I believe that Sinofsky, senior vice president of Windows, that replaced Allchin, is doing an absolute abysmal job at managing the beta. His arrogance, lack of regard for it's dedicated beta testing team, as well as sencitivity to the community only makes me want to avoid Windows products from here on out. Let me throw the rest of my professionalism out the door and say what's on a lot of people's minds when I say that.. Steven Sinofsky is a Douchebag. He came off as abrasive through his handling of the Office 2007 beta, and the lack of gratitude to the testers that took the time off, time they could be spending with their families, to bug test.

Microsoft also failed to handle the letting go of Jim Allchin very well, they left a lot of things unanswered, and perhaps he was a scapegoat for the failure of Microsoft. Windows Vista's failure was not completely Allchin's fault, and yet, he doesn't work at Microsoft anymore, mysteriously after Vista's release.

To sum it all up, I have a lot of underlying frustrations with Microsoft, and that doesn't even begin to cover most of the things that I can't even talk about, but just being able to get this off my chest without the fear of being persecuted by Microsoft for expressing my frustrations makes this rant a very special one indeed.

Current bugs in Vista that drive me nuts

2009-01-13T16:13:00.001-05:00

1 – Highlight Newly Installed Programs lags the start menu for almost random reasons, this was reported in the Vista Beta, and placed under Not Reproducible.

Work Around

2 – Random Icons Breaking at completely random, and almost impossible to predict instances.

Bugged ~ Not Reproducible

Fix

3 – Dual Core CPU thrashing, while Windows Defender scans in the background.

Not Bugged

Fixed by Microsoft in Service Pack 1

4 – Network & System windows showing Not Available.

Fixed by Microsoft in Service Pack 1

Izymail

2009-01-13T12:56:00.001-05:00

Found this website while looking through that About.com:Email article on how to get Yahoo mail in Windows Live Messenger. What Izymail does is it makes Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and a handful of other providers, compatible with POP3. Basically you register at their website, choose whether you want the somewhat limited Free Membership, or pay $1.49 a month for full featured premium services.

I haven’t had a chance to use this myself, but it looks like it could help provide users with an easy alternative to POP3 forwarding in Windows Live Mail and Outlook 2007 for web services that don’t originally support it.

Izymail

Use Yahoo Mail in Windows Live Mail

2009-01-13T12:48:00.002-05:00

This is a little more complicated than using Gmail in Windows Live Mail, mainly due to the fact that you’ll need to use an application called yPOPS. I haven’t had much testing with this, because I don’t own a yahoo mail account, but this is how I think it’ll need to go. I’ll source the websites I got the info from incase further research needs to be done.

“Access Free Yahoo! Mail with Windows Live Mail Using YPOPs! (Simple and Free)

To set up a free Yahoo! Mail account in Windows Live Mail using YPOPs!:

Install YPOPs! and make sure it is running.
Select Tools | Accounts... from the menu in Windows Live Mail.
Click Add....
Make sure E-mail Account is highlighted.
Click Next.
Type your Yahoo! Mail address under E-mail address:.
Enter your Yahoo! Mail password under Password:.
Type your name under Display Name:.
Make sure Manually configure server settings for e-mail account is checked.
Click Next.
Make sure POP3 is selected under My incoming mail server is a ___ server..
Enter "localhost" (not including the quotation marks) under Incoming server:.
- If "localhost" turns out not to work, try "127.0.0.1" instead.
Check your Yahoo! Mail user name (your Yahoo! Mail address minus "@yahoo.com") is entered under Login ID.
Type "localhost" under Outgoing server:.
Click Next.
Now click Finish.
Click Close. “

This was taken by C&P from About.com:Email, they have an incredible guide on setting up Yahoo Mail, on Windows Live Messenger, and further configuration instructions. Thanks goes to Heinz Tschabitscher for coming up with this incredibly clever way to use Yahoo Mail with Windows Live Mail.

If you receive an error using yPOPS complaining that it’s missing MSVCR71.dll, simply download the .dll from the website below and place it in the yPOPS directory.

MSVCR71.dll

New OpenSearch Additions

2009-01-10T00:44:00.003-05:00

Working on these again, will add more soon. As always, you can find my other OpenSearch scripts in the directory under Helpful Links. These are only compatible with Microsoft’s new OS Windows 7, which is now in Beta.

CNN – Now you can search the famous news website from within Explorer. (Picture Below) – CNN Website

Rant-Space – Can’t seem to find an article I wrote a while back? No problem, simply double click this to add the Rant-Space Search feature in Explorer.

DL.TV – Being a fan of the weekly video podcast from the guys over at DL.TV, I had to make this. Go check them out for up to date info from the tech from. DL.TV

Disclaimer: These searches are not endorsed by the websites that are featured in these searches, they are created for everyone to enjoy.

Rant-Space & Twitter!

2009-01-10T00:20:00.001-05:00

If you haven’t noticed, you may need to either get your eyes checked or put your glasses on. ;) I’ve added a twitter panel on the side, which will keep people updated on the happenings of myself and the tech community. Think of it as a little news feed, you can also follow me on Twitter by clicking the “Follow Me” text.

Windows 7 Beta 1 Downloads

2009-01-09T16:24:00.003-05:00

Direct from Microsoft.. You’ll still need to register to receive a product key, trying to figure out how to do that now, and I’ll post with instructions. Be sure to get the hotfix which fixes the .mp3 meta-data bug.

Windows 7 x86

Windows 7 x64

Product Keys

Windows 7 Beta 1 So Far

2009-01-09T13:13:00.001-05:00

....This OS is incredible, reduced memory usage that seems to beat Windows XP, better Aero, better in-game performance, very little bugs (They are still there though. :P). Incredible responsiveness, less CPU intensive, less bloat. Running Aero and Aero Basic doesn't effect resources, in fact I still get 450MB of memory usage on my 2GB of ram, even if I'm running Classic.

This is the basic rundown of ram usage I've seen, this is with the same hardware, isn't a benchmark, but just an idea of how things are right now. These are taken when I'm just chatting on WLM and listening to music.

Windows XP idle in Classic - 350MB
Windows XP Classic Usage - 450MB
Windows XP idle with themes - 470MB
Windows XP Ram Usage - 600MB

Windows Vista idle - 650MB
Windows Vista Usage - 750MB

Windows 7 Beta 1 idle - 450MB
Windows 7 Beta 1 Usage - 550MB

A Few Updates…

2009-01-07T19:34:00.002-05:00

Windows 7 Beta 1 Build – I originally wrote about how I had a hunch that Windows 7 Beta 1 that will be released to MSDN, TechNet and so on would be a different build than the leak.. I was wrong, it WILL be the same build as the leak, and Microsoft will patch the problem using Windows Update in Windows 7.

Neowin & OpenSearch – It turns out that Neowin DID publish one of my Open Search scripts, on their currently running article. In fact, it’s apparently the unofficial, official, .osdx for Neowin.net. So go download it from the listings on the right!

Windows 7 Beta 1 official release – It really is beginning to look like tonight might be the night for the release of Beta 1 of Microsoft’s highly anticipated OS. Steve Ballmer is expected to make the opening keynote speech for CES 2009 at approximately 6:30 PM PST (9:30 PM EST).

Source: Neowin

Rant-Space 2008 Year in Review

2009-01-06T14:49:00.003-05:00

Wow what a terrible year, anyway, here are the top visited articles of 2008…

Windows 7 6956 Review

Windows XP “Open File Location” Right Click Menu

Windows XP Windows Update Fix

Windows XP SP3 Information

Virgin Galactic V.S.S Enterprise ~ Not one of the most read articles, but I thought I’d include it due to it’s awesome factor. :D

Also, December 15th marks four years of Rant-Space! You can review other "most visited" articles by year down on the lower right hand side of this blog.

Just a hunch… Windows 7 Beta 1

2009-01-06T14:43:00.001-05:00

This is just a hunch, and I might be proven wrong, but I don’t think Microsoft’s pool of beta testers will receive build 7000 from Microsoft. As some of you who have been following the recent developments on various other tech community websites, build 7000 of Windows 7 was leaked from a Chinese MSDN account onto various torrent networks, initially by a Chinese tracker, and then onto various other multi-national trackers.

This is the same build that featured that bug in Windows Media Player 12 which would corrupt the meta-data of an MP3 is it’s meta-data is larger. This would clip off the first 5 to 15 seconds of an MP3. Microsoft re-acted by saying that they’d release a patch for it, but then later stated that the build being released to testers will not feature this bug.

Now from what I gathered from this statement, as build 7000 is completed, that since the bug will not be in the build, that could lead to the possibility of a newer build reaching Technet and Microsoft’s private beta testing pool.

Now again this is all speculation, but hopefully I’m right, as I’m sure the testers would rather have a build that didn’t contain this bug, despite whether they use WMP12 or not.

Oh Neowin, silly Neowin

2009-01-06T14:08:00.002-05:00

I find it funny that not even a day after I post a thread on Neowin with OpenSearch, get a lot of people excited about it, release some of my own scripts, that Neowin runs a story on it. I mean I understand it’s a new awesome technology that they totally ignored BEFORE I posted that thread on the forum. They even ignored it when Long Zheng posted his Flickr search script on istartedsomething.com.

Now I’m not whining or whatever, I just think it’s ironic, and I’m happy my thread pushed the technology into the open a little bit more, but seriously, post the thread in the news story or SOMETHING. They totally nabbed everything from the link from my thread that I provided, ignored my thread, my scripts and everything. I mean, WOW.. Goes to prove that I won’t do anything for Neowin anymore.

TechNet Set to Receive Windows 7 & More on Windows Search

2009-01-05T14:22:00.003-05:00

Well, today is the starting date for TechNet participants to receive their copy of Microsoft Windows 7, but when it comes to beta testers, still nothing. No firm date from Microsoft, nothing but speculation, a few hard lined Windows fan boys going nuts thinking they’ll get it either today or this week. Personally, bring it on, I’m anxious to get started.

In my last post I placed a few links on there which will add in Explorer search support for those particular websites, OpenSearch was started by Brandon Live, a regular Neowin poster who works for Microsoft, and evolved into a major feature in Windows 7. Long Zheng posted a Flickr addon for it, and Brandon wrote a Deviantart one as well. I personally love this feature, as I use search a lot in Windows, and having the ability to open up Explorer and search through a website FROM Explorer would’ve been nice, but now it comes included in one of the many features of Windows 7 that’s making this out to be probably the most exciting release of Windows to date.

As of right now I don’t have Windows 7, not even the leaks, so I haven’t been able to test these search features myself and see how well it works. All I know is that they DO work due to other people testing them out for me, and not hearing any complaints about them so far. I’m coming up dry for new websites to make OSDX scripts for, but one of the things on my to do list today is to make a dedicated post for all the OSDX files I create and throw them on the bar on the side for download.

Edit ~ Link posted on the side in Helpful Links, you can download all the latest search providers for OpenSearch that I create on that link.

Windows 7 OpenSearch

2009-01-04T13:13:00.002-05:00

One of the little known features of Microsoft’s next operating system, Windows 7. This feature will allow anyone to search various popular websites that will eventually support Microsoft’s OpenSearch from within Explorer. If you’re running a pre-release version of Windows 7, you can get a look at how OpenSearch works now by running these .osdx files on any Windows 7 build. It will add the files to Explorer and from within Explorer search the website.

This works by using Windows Live Search, which fully supports OpenSearch, and any website that either has a search itself, or features RSS.

If you don’t have Windows 7, no big deal, Microsoft is planning a public beta sometime in the first half of 2009.

Local Mom & Pop Shop – Brainwave Computers

2008-12-13T18:36:00.001-05:00

Thought I’d give a shout-out to a local shop in the Delmarva (Eastern Shore Maryland, VA, DE region), not only does this shop feature really low prices and custom built machines, they also feature built to order Laptop computers from Acer. I bought a red & black PC tower for nearly $700 almost a year ago, and so far, only needed to get replacement parts once or twice.

They feature built to order PC’s that take a few days to build, and feature a nice one year warranty for free maintenance and repair. There have been quality reports in the past from various customers, but I never noticed any personally, and all the hardware that was purchased from them are at the same quality level as Dell, or HP.

Seriously worth a look if you need to get your geek fix while on your way to visit Ocean City or whatever. :)

BrainWave Computer Services

Windows 7 Build 6956 Review

2008-12-09T11:39:00.001-05:00

When you think Microsoft Windows, do you think Windows XP, or Windows Vista? Keeping with the unbiased approach that I talked about in my prior blog post, it’s hard to not think about the disappointment that some Microsoft employees felt with the reception of Microsoft’s latest OS. Windows Vista was hit with a lot of driver and software incompatibility, by lagging hardware companies. nVidia was one of them, as well as Creative. They have since learned from their mistakes and now Windows Vista drivers are top notch and comparable to Windows XP’s drivers at Service Pack 1. So where are we now? We’re a good couple of years into the life span of Windows Vista, with Windows XP still in the forefront, due to the simple fact that many companies will not upgrade to Vista and wait it out until Windows 7, which is what this article is in fact about, the next generation OS from Microsoft.

Windows 7 – The UI

This review will not completely cover all of the features of Windows 7, simply because the OS is in pre-beta, and will not be feature or even possibly UI complete. This is a review of the latest build released, which is currently build 6956.winmain.081122-1150, the build released at WinHEC China 2008. The most noticeable thing in the included screenshots, the taskbar, what happened to it, you might ask. Microsoft wanted to streamline the Windows user interface by creating what’s called the SuperBar. Designed for ease of use and accessibility, the Windows SuperBar features larger icons, raising the size of the taskbar up a bit, and no text in the taskbar by default, they are also grouped together automatically by default. Icons that are not launched, will appear, but not have a selection or active button graphic over-top of them, replacing the Quick Launch by infusing it into the Superbar. When you mouse over the active, and launched superbar buttons, a Window Preview will appear, grouping the active Windows, minimized or not, into the preview. The most impressive thing about this feature is Aero Peek. Mouse over the Window in the preview, and it will focus or show that Window on your desktop, again, minimized or not. If you have a group of Windows on your desktop already, it will clear out all other Windows with a visually pleasing Glass effect, meaning you’ll only see your window you mouse over, and not the others.

This is an effort on Microsoft’s part, to again, streamline the user interface and allow better accessibility. Right clicking some buttons will reveal a new menu, with icons such as Explorer featuring a “Frequent” section of the menu. The menu also gives you the option to “Pin” the application to the taskbar, for faster access. Again as covered earlier in this paragraph, closed applications will just appear as icons in the superbar. You can also move a window towards the right hand side of the screen and a clear glass like preview window will appear, showing you what it will look like when you snap your window to the side of the screen.

Microsoft took note to the complaints of users that remnants of older OS’s appear in various places, breaking the consistency of the desktop. This in mind, Microsoft went through Windows 7 and gave everything a facelift. From MSPaint, to Calculator, from the Appearance section, to even the base icons. Everything has been revamped, and so far, it really helps with enhancing the desktop experience with Windows 7. Unsure at this point of isolated, hardly used icons have gotten the face lift yet or not, but through reviewing the latest build, I could not find any. The start button and start menu also received a face lift, as well. Some icons have expansion menus when appearing on the left hand side of the start menu; you’ll easily spot this with a small icon near the middle of the start menu, facing the right. Click this little arrow and the left hand side of the start menu will expand to cover the entire start menu, and feature recently opened documents as well as additional options. In one of the screenshots, you’ll see how the “Getting Started” option will have this feature, and how it will expand onto the rest of the start menu with more options such as, “Learn about Windows 7”, “Personalize Windows”, “Transfer your files”, and so on.

Other UI enhancements, such as the movement of various customization features in Windows 7, to display options, received the face lift as well. Moving Display to the Desktop’s right click menu, and calling it Screen Resolution, with the addition of the Gadgets option, which I will get to later in the review. Choosing Personalization will give you a neatly organized customization section, broken down into several parts. The main section showing Themes, which you can pick from a selection of already included themes, or create and customize your own themes. The options are not as complete as changing desktop elements such as the Window border or start button, but are more expansive than Windows Vista’s customization features. Below the themes box, you have Desktop Background, Window color, Sounds, and Screen Saver. After tweaking your theme, you can then save your theme and use it later; saved themes will appear in the Themes box above those options.

Screen Resolution right click option is pretty straight forward, showing a picture of your screen, with the usual monitor recognition number. It also shows Display, Resolution, and Orientation, with drop down menus next to each. You can also mess with Advanced Settings. Clicking advanced will give you advanced display settings similar to the one found in Vista. The sidebar is also gone, replaced, by desktop gadgets. Microsoft listened to individual complaints about the sidebar in Vista, and got rid of it, allowing you to freely move your gadgets about the desktop. As far as I could see in the latest build of Windows 7, it featured the same gadgets as in Vista, and will likely change when RTM approaches.

Microsoft also got rid of some of the “bloat”, by removing previously built in applications, and moving them to the Windows Live “Wave 3” suite. These applications include Windows Movie Maker, Windows Mail, and a few others, breaking with a tradition that has lasted more than 15 years. Surely this will be a welcome change, as it cuts down on the size of the OS, and allows you to install them as you please. The Windows Live “Wave 3” suite is due to be released fairly soon. Explorer has also been changed a bit, featuring a more streamlined favorites bar, and the exclusion of the Folders navigation bar. The change also includes the Library bar, as well as Homegroup, and Network. Not 100% sure on what the Homegroup is, but it could very well be a home oriented answer to Workgroups, whether Microsoft will rework Workgroups is at this point, unknown.

This review just barely scratches the surface of what can be found in this build, as more reviews will be written as publicly available builds will become available. The direction of Windows 7 is promising, as it seems they finally get what the user wants, ease of access, with a fresh user-interface. It amazes me how much they listened to the chatter of their user base and followed through, offering fixes to frustrations such as the break in Maximization, and the black out of Aero Glass when maximized. I’m really unsure of when this will be available, the general consensus is “sometime in 2009”, with a beta approaching very, very soon. I’d rather not write main details, without significant proof, then post what I “think” will be the release date of Microsoft’s next-gen OS.

Screenshots - Flickr

Review for Windows 7 6956 Coming

2008-12-09T10:22:00.001-05:00

100% unbiased.. ;) I'm writing it up right now, and will post it when it's complete, to bring a more professional touch to it.

“Open File Location” Right Click Item in XP

2008-11-30T10:34:00.001-05:00

Ever wanted to right click a shortcut and go directly to that shortcut’s originating folder? Well if you’re running Windows Vista, you can do that by default, but for the rest of us on XP, we can’t, until now. Thanks to a simple script that was written by Ramesh Srinivasan of The Winhelponline Blog, you can, and it’s really easy to get installed too.

First thing you’ll want to do, is download the script.

Download the “Open File Location” script – Mediafire

Next, you’ll want to hold down your Winkey and press R, this will bring up your run window, type in %systemroot%.

Once C:/Windows is open, move the script over to your Windows directory and double click, then, just press OK to install. Now, right click a shortcut and verify that you have “Open File Location”.

Microsoft Direct-X Web Install Not Working

2008-11-23T08:21:00.001-05:00

Unsure if I’m the only one effected by this, but through two OS changes, the darn DirectX web update will not work for me, so just incase I’m not the only one who experiences this..

Direct-X Redist. November 08 – Filehippo Mirror

Happy Gaming. :D

Stuck at the Uni

2008-10-13T08:45:00.001-04:00

Well, now that I have some time to burn, I realize that I’ve been neglecting a lot of things. For instance, my blog, and all the web things that I have to do, that’s gaming for you, it’ll suck you in and make you neglect a lot of the important things.

Oh well, I’ll begin updating this thing more often so that this blog will get more content, and not necessarily tech related content, but just content in general. Not going to spill out my entire day, but random content, maybe even a little political content to shake things up a bit. ;)

For instance, are you for Obama or McCain, and who do you feel will win the election based on their credentials, charisma and so on. Leave a comment about it and feel free to voice your opinion. :)

Adapting to Windows Vista’s Growing Pains

2008-09-30T08:01:00.002-04:00

The amount of time between Windows XP and Windows Vista was HUGE, and never before has a Windows client OS felt the pains of such a long release cycle as Windows XP to Windows Vista. You may also find that a lot of your hardware that ran Windows XP, might not run Windows Vista as well. There are a few tweaks and steps to try and ease the pains felt when upgrading to Vista on hardware that was built for Windows XP.

RAM

Probably the most important issue here, is the ram, 512MB was pushing it for XP, 1GB is comfortable for most people. However due to Windows Vista’s new features, like Super Fetch, 1GB might not be enough. Upgrading to 2GB is probably the best solution, and for the best bang for your buck, upgrade in sets of twos, for instance, 2GB to 4GB to 6GB, will ensure that your PC take advantage of what’s called Dual Channel Ram. Please take note that due to architecture limitations, you will not be able to upgrade past 3GB of ram on PC Hardware that isn’t 32-bit, fortunately, most modern processors support 64-bit operating systems.

Windows Search

This feature is in place to make searching for files faster and easier, however if you do not want to take advantage of this feature, it can be disabled for a minor performance boost. You can do this by holding down your Windows key on your keyboard, pressing R while holding that Windows key down and typing in. services.msc, navigate down the menu until you find Windows Search, and double click it. You’ll be presented with a window called “Windows Search Properties”. Look for Startup Type, and change that menu next to it to Disabled. Then, if you look lower, you’ll notice that Service Status is set to Started, click stop and then apply.

Windows Super-Fetch

Here is where things get a bit more complicated, disabling this requires you to dip into the Windows Registry. If you’re uncomfortable doing this, then you best not attempt this, but if you do exactly what is instructed here, you run little risk of messing up your Windows Vista installation.

Hold down your Windows key on your keyboard again and hit R to bring up the Run dialog. Next, type in regedit, and hit enter. You’ll be presented with a window called Registry Editor, with a navigation tree on the left, and the main window on the right.

Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SYSTEM, CurrentControlSet, Control, Session Manager, Memory Management, PrefetchParameters.

You’ll notice on the right hand side a set of keys labeled, BaseTime, BootId, EnableBootTrace, Enable Prefetcher, EnableSuperFetch, VideoInitTime. Do not touch anything but EnableSuperFetch, and set it to any of the values below.

0 to disable Superfetch
1 to enable prefetching when program is launched
2 to enable boot prefetching
3 to enable prefectching of everything

After you disable SuperFetch, you will need to go to Windows Services, as stated above, bring up the Run dialog and type services.msc, and navigate down until you see SuperFetch, double click it, set Startup type to Disabled, and set Service Status to Stopped.

What SuperFetch does is it uses part of your ram to cache frequently opened programs to allow faster startup. Problem is, if you do not have that much ram, it cuts performance down, and if your a gamer, the more ram you have available to your system to run your games, the better.

Start Menu Lag

Follow this link for the solution.

Windows Defender

This scans at random times and gives little to no notification when it scans your system. Unfortunately it takes up quite a bit of system resources when it does this. To stop Windows Defender from running automatic scans, go to Control Panel and in the upper right hand corner, in the search bar, type in Windows Defender. This will then show Windows Defender in the main window, click it to bring up the Windows Defender application.

In the Windows Defender window, you’ll see a top set of icons labeled, Home, Scan, History, Tools and the blue question mark. Click on Tools, then in the Settings sub-section, click on Options. You’ll see Automatic Scanning as the first section in Options. Untick “Automatically scan my computer (recommended)”. Now the reason I’m targeting this is because most of the readers here have their own malware and anti-virus solutions, and Defender has one of the worst detection rates of any of the programs out there.

Update

2008-09-17T20:11:00.001-04:00

Removal of all links to AeroXP, as they’re jerk-off of a Editor wronged me.

Vista Start Menu Lag Fix

2008-08-30T08:15:00.002-04:00

Are you tired of having your Windows Vista start menu lag up whenever you try to navigate it? Did you know that a simple untick of a setting will completely resolve the problem?

Right click the start orb, and choose Properties, make sure your in the Start Menu tab.

With the top "Start Menu" option enabled, click the Customize... tab next to it.

Next, scroll down the list until you see the option "Highlight newly installed programs" and untick it, then click OK, and ok again to close the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window, and there you go, your start menu should be as speedy as when you first installed Vista. :)

Outlook 2007 + Gmail Update

2008-08-11T14:38:00.001-04:00

Google has now posted detailed guides on how to configure Outlook 2007 to work with Gmail.

Link

Fixing Broken Vista Icons ~ Windows Vista

2008-08-09T08:04:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you might find yourself browsing around Vista Explorer and suddenly running into a broken icon, you'll know it when you see it, it's the icon that no longer shows your regular applications image, but instead, an UGLY Windows 95/98 style icon in it's place. There is an easy way to fix this, and it boils down to deleting a system file, but don't worry, it'll get replaced by Vista as soon as it's deleted, and fix your ugly 95/98 icon problem.

First open up your start menu and type CMD inside the search box to locate Command Prompt. Right click it and choose Run As Administrator, and keep it open, you'll need it later on.

Next, bring up Task Manager, right click the taskbar and it'll be on that menu.

Locate Explorer in the process' list and choose it, then click End Process, you'll notice everything will disappear, save for the windows you have open at the moment.

Next you'll need to navigate back to command prompt and since you'll be starting out at your Windows\system32 folder. Simply type "cd .." twice so that the command prompt says C:\>.

Next type in "cd Users\Username\AppData\Local" (Username is the name of the Windows account your currently using.)

Now the file we need to delete is hiding itself, we'll have to show it by inputing another command.

Type in "

attrib -h IconCache.db" to allow command prompt to view the file.

Next we'll need to delete the IconCache.db file, simply type in "del IconCache.db" and hit enter.

Now, close Command Prompt, and CRTL+ALT+DEL and choose Task Manager.

Go to File, Run, and type in Explorer.

Hopefully with this fix you'll notice that your icons are back to normal. :)

My name is John, and I'm addicted to XP

2008-06-29T12:48:00.001-04:00

I've been a Windows user since Windows 3.0, and for a while my OS of choice was Windows 98, even over Windows 2000. A lot has happened since those days, and I find myself using Windows XP, over Linux, over Vista and so on. Why? Because it's dependable, fast and I'm an old fashioned computer user. Sure the eyecandy is nice, but what good is eye candy when you can't be the power user you always wanted to be?

It's true that I change OS as often as my shorts, but I'm a semi-indecisive individual, torn between better functionality, gaming, performance, and eye candy. It's a vicious cycle, and I wish I could just stick to a single OS, or find that happy medium. Here is how it basically always turns out..

Windows XP - Starting from here, it's all good for a few months, but then I get sick and tired of the same old thing, the drag of using a seven year old OS is heavy, despite it's rock solidness. So I install Windows Vista or Ubuntu.

Windows Vista - Vista runs great, if I disable half a dozen "features". Gaming performance is atrocious, but the OS itself is pretty, sort of like the inbred cousin of Apple's OS X. "Glass is purdy." Once I finally get over the hype of the eyecandy and actually try to game, I find myself working around the OS, instead of with it.

Ubuntu - Geek, Geek and more Geek, I use it to try and get a handle for the OS, I get to a certain point of configuration, and I get disgusted with it when I need to spend 15 minutes searching for a solution I could solve in just two minutes on XP and Vista.

Back to XP, rinse and add nauseam.

I'd love to give OS X a shot, and I'd probably find out that I can have my happy medium on that, especially since it allows dual booting of Windows XP via Boot Camp. Alas though, money is an issue. I am tempting to look at the iPod Touch, but I'm waiting until after June for when Apple charges their customers/bitches to add a highly controlled third party platform, of which I'll probably jailbreak the HELL out of it and enjoy my little grey area hobby, emulation. :3

Oh well, hopefully Windows <Insert Name Here> will quench my inexhaustible thirst for performance and reliability. :/

DropBox Invite Giveaway

2008-06-26T07:24:00.002-04:00

Got into this nice little beta during Evenflow's brief open giveaway, and since I've been getting a recent influx of new readers, I thought I'd celebrate by handing out invites. I have eight invites in all, and they will probably go quickly. First eight emails will received an invite and I'll continue to host future invites when I get more to hand out.

Dropbox - Visit this website for more info

Giveaway Email - Email this. Remember, first come first served

Windows XP Windows Update Quickie Fix

2008-06-23T10:54:00.002-04:00

As I posted in an earlier blog post, there was a way to fix the Windows Update error that comes from Windows XP's Windows Update every now and then, but it dealt with registering a bunch of files manually using the RUN command, well to make things easier for those of you out there, I created a little file that will automatically do it for you. There are a few tiny requirements that you'll need to have before running this.

Firstly, this is ONLY for Windows XP (Home/Professional), doing this on Vista MIGHT break your Update, I'm unsure though, and I'm working on testing to see if this works on Windows Vista as well, but since the update system is so drastically different, I doubt it will.

Secondly, incase you don't have administrator privileges, this might not work, although I highly doubt anyone who would be looking for this fix wouldn't already be running as an admin on Windows XP.

Download - Windows XP .bat file

The .bat file contains the following code.

"REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 ATL.DLL
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL"

Extract to the desktop and double click it. :)

On Second Thought...

2008-06-22T19:37:00.001-04:00

I've decided to keep the blog right here, and not move it anywhere. Reason being, people read it, and apparently find it on the internet just fine, which is what I wanted. I want to find those hard to get to fixes, post those fixes and have those fixes get to people who need them the most, basically, I'm just here to help, and I can do that more with my own independent blog. :)

What I want to try to do is post a fix every one or two weeks, it'll take me time to locate them, and test to see if it works, read up on it and then post it here for people to read. So keep looking at this blog for updates.

Finally

2008-06-08T19:06:00.001-04:00

Finally the hush-hush of the new blog website is over, I've been added to the dozen or more bloggers on a website that has increased the reader base from 60 or so, to thousands, I'm excited about it, and I want to bring the readers from here over to the new blog. You can expect the same content that has always been over here, the fixes, reviews and general rants that the regulars here have come accustomed to. :)

Rant-Space@AeroXP

I'm so calling this.. :P

2008-06-04T07:27:00.002-04:00

I bet you it'll be an Barack Obama - Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008, good luck beating THAT McCain. :P

Windows Update 0x80004002 and 0x8024400D Fix

2008-06-03T05:14:00.002-04:00

As with the latest trend that seems to plague Microsoft, they seem to keep breaking their own things. Windows XP SP3 is no exclusion to this, from massive reboot errors, to the less subtle breaking of Windows Update. Also, apparently, SP3 breaks Windows Live Installer's ability to install their products as well.. all with the incredibly detailed error message. "Windows Update failed because there is a problem on your computer" .. and that's it. Well, here is a fix.

Press Start, then Run.

Type in REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL and hit enter, you'll get a little popup saying DllRegisterServer in WUAPI.DLL succeeded.

Repeat that step for these below..

REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 ATL.DLL
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL

Then try Windows Update again.. it should work.

Next step is to drop this awful company like a rock and buy a mac, that's what my plans are at the moment.

Preparing For a Phased Transition

2008-05-31T04:58:00.001-04:00

I've had this blog for a while, and even though I'm not willing to give it up just yet, I'm preparing to move to another blog. There I will continue to post simultaneous posts between the two for the next month, and then slowly transition completely over to the new blog network that I'm joining. I cannot say at this point where it is, as it's still in development, and the best time I can give you is "Soon". Soon afterwards I will then try and devote my time to ANOTHER website that's up and coming, and will try and juggle my time between the three <Site A>, <Site B>, and Blogger. Content won't change, if anything I'll be striving for more frequent updates, as I know that there are regular readers of this blog, most of which streaming in from Google and the various other forums that I go to.

Here is a hint at the name of the new blog. Rant Space @ <Can't Say For Now>, sorry for all the secrecy, I'm usually as open with information as I possibly can be, but I simply cannot as both websites are hush hush now until their release. :)

Windows 7 So Far

2008-05-28T02:36:00.002-04:00

I admit, I do like Windows more than OS X, even though for the past several months I've been trying to get OS X (Hackintosh) to run on this machine, only to find out the chipset isn't compatible. Honestly, I get excited when I hear about Windows 7 coming out, what the MS guys say about it, that it's shaping up to be a pretty decent OS.

Basically, it'll run on a modified, optimized Vista kernel, it will not be a completely new kernel, but it will build on the foundation of Windows Vista, and for those who have been burned by the bug-tastic OS, don't worry, it apparently is leaps and bounds faster and more stable than Vista, even in it's Alpha phase. The recently showcased multi-touch support for Windows 7, which will allow a similar to Microsoft Touch. (That pricey, kind of bulky, semi-useless, massive computer/living room furniture, with a screen on it that has touch features.)

Aside from that, it hasn't come far, and it's release date? Late 2009, with a possible beta any time now. (Hopefully) The main issue I see so far is the user interface, and I'll post some screen shots of the OS below this article. I'm going to be somewhat of an optimist here, I WANT Windows 7 to succeed, mainly because this is Microsoft's almost close to last attempt to get it right, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt when they say that the OS has seen improvements. I haven't had access to Windows 7 so far, although a lot of my tech savvy friends have, and talk nothing but praise about it.(Think of this as a shout-out, youknowwho)

Anyway, now for the UI screenshots that got sneaked out when Ballmer was showcasing maps.

Enjoy

Fix For Core 2 100% Usage

2008-05-28T02:15:00.003-04:00

It is now recommended to disable automatic scanner, rather than disable Windows Defender completely, you can get the instructions on how to disable automatic scanning in this post.

Ever wonder why in the world your Vista desktop has suddenly lagged to hell and back, ever wonder what that random SVChost.exe that uses nearly 60MB of ram and 50% (100% of Core 2) is? Wonder no longer, It's only Windows Defender trying to protect you with possibly the worst Spyware protection database in existance! Well no longer, because I'm going to tell whoever reads this article how to disable Windows Defender so it doesn't turn your sleek $1200 computer into an E-Mail machine!

First, press WinKey+R, to bring up the run dialoge, next type in services.msc, and approve Windows Nag (UAC). Next navigate to Windows Defender on the list, if it hasn't already been killed by killing that particular SVChost.exe, then proceed to double click Windows Defender.

Under that nice shiny Windows Defender Properties (Local Computer), and next to the box labeled Startup Type: Choose Disabled. Next, click stop, and then Ok. You'll automatically notice the little defender pop up with basically "OMG DEFENDER IS NOT RUNNING!", ignore it, and download AVG Free Edition 8.0 from FileHippo.com or something.

D6 Windows 7 Announcement

2008-05-27T21:36:00.039-04:00

Originally on AeroXP, I'll just post the info here due to the inexperienced mods.

Info From Engadget's awesome D6 event coverage.

First screenshot

6:16PM PT - The joint's filling up! Clearly no one's on stage yet, though, so don't go too far.

Second Screenshot

6:27 - Announcer welcomes Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones. Applauding Walt and Kara, discussing the "change in ownership," talking News Corp. Errr.

Third Screenshot

6:30 - Welcoming out Walt and Kara... aaand here they are.

6:31 - Mossberg: "It's been a turbulent year for a lot of these companies." Swisher: "It's been a big news year." Indeed it has.

Fourth Screenshot

6:36 - They want to have a Bill + Steve redux, except this time the Steve is Ballmer, not Jobs. Playing the Gates retirement video from CES.

6:43 - Stiiiiiiiill playing the video. It's still pretty good though, and they added a few new clips here and there.

6:46 - All done! Mossberg: Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer!

Fifth Screenshot

6:47 - Taking it back to the beginning, what kind of classmate/roommate was Bill in college? "He was a pretty shy guy... quiet, kind of shy, but a certain kind of spark. Especially later in the day, early in the morning. Bill was usually going to bed by the time I was waking up."

6:50 - Ballmer talking about how Gates came and went Harvard. Gates: "You can leave and come back!" Say, is that a hint about Bills retirement? Ballmer's talking up his time spent at Procter and Gamble. Mossberg: Was it about then that you tried to hire Steve? Gates: "Not yet..." they were still way early on in the company.

6:53 - Mossberg: Did you wait to finish business school? Ballmer: "This is classic. Gates calls, 'Hey, what are you doing? Oh, god, too bad you don't have a twin brother or something...' he didn't just come out and say anything. 'Too bad, too bad -- and he hung up!' That was the sales call!"

6:54 - Gates on the early days: "We had so many customers, so many choices about what we could do next."

6:54 - Gates on the early days: "We had so many customers, so many choices about what we could do next. We've always managed the company very conservatively." Talking anecdotally about how early-Microsoft wanted to have enough in the bank to pay its employees for a year if their customers stopped paying. "I had this very conservative view of our financial limits."

6:57 - Ballmer: "I wondered, why did I leave Stanford business school for this?" Eventually Bill gave him the real pitch: "We can put a computer on everyone's desk." Gates: "I needed Steve. I needed the skills he had, I needed a partner." Ballmer: "Bill said, 'Prove we can hire one good guy, and we'll hire 2-18'... and that became our management approach!" Ballmer says Microsoft hedges all its bets, takes all its risks technologically -- "Why take financial risks?"

7:03 - Mossberg: There's this perception that [Bill's] the technology guy, and [Steve's] the sales guy. Is that right? Bill: They've been jointly involved in a lot of crossover stuff, "Steve and I have done all this stuff together." Ballmer: Discussing working on the Windows 1.0 as a project manager. (Remember that infomercial?) "I'm not an engineer!"

7:04 - Swisher: Would you call yourself a businessman? Gates: "Sure. Sales minus costs equals profits. Is there more?" Big laughter. Mossberg: Did it bug you that Bill blew up and became extremely famous? Ballmer: "No. ... It was always clear Bill was the senior partner and I was the junior partner... it's never bothered me at all."

7:08 - Swisher: Do you still get veto on company decisions? Gates: "No." Says he's become the junior partner when he swapped roles with Ballmer. Mossberg asking about Bill's participation these days and going forward. "It's a very different role" he's taking on. Ozzie and Mundie have stepped up, and he's looking to Steve to help pick and choose his future projects.

Sixth Screenshot

7:12 - Ballmer: "I want to know what [Bill] thinks." Swisher wants to talk Yahoo! Ballmer gives the quick rundown of events to date. "We are not rebidding for the company -- we reserve the right to do so, but it's not on the docket." Swisher: What are you interested in, in Yahoo? Ha, they're wheeling out a whiteboard for Ballmer to diagram his explanation. Swisher: "This is like crack for him." Ballmer discussing ads, bidders, search, and the scale of it all. "To accelerate scale, it made sense for us to look at Yahoo!'s business."

7:17 - Ballmer says they're still in talks with Yahoo! about a "partnership." Swisher mentions that Ballmer's model of competing with Google is reminiscent of a monopoly. Ballmer gives the who, me? look. Gates: "Guys like us avoid monopolies because we compete!" Naturally, the lot of that exchange was all very tongue-in-cheek.

7:20 - Ballmer: "You need scale, you need business and technology innovation. Large and small... this is a funny marketplace in which to say you're cheaper [than the competition]." Swisher: What's the key element" Ballmer: "The most important thing is that we have a good team and that we're patient." And money -- investment. Ballmer's getting super intense. Mossberg: "You're getting a little scary there." Ballmer: "WELL, YOU GOT THE REAL ME!" Dude, this is Steve, what do you want?

7:24 - Mossberg wants to talk Vista. "Is Vista a failure? Is it a mistake?" Ballmer: "It's not a failure, it's not a mistake. Are there things we'll modify and improve going forward? Sure." Gates is mum, smiling off into the distance. Bet he can't wait to wash his hands of this stuff.

7:26 - Ballmer: "Let me ask Bill..." is Vista up to your expectations compared to '95 and 3.0? Gates: "There's no product that we've ever shipped that was 100% of what I wanted. That's part of the magic of software, people give you feedback... and you get to make a new version. ... We have a culture of 'we need to do better.'"

7:28 - Ballmer: "There are two unique things: in a lot of our Windows releases in the past, we've always had a second stream. With 95 we were introducing NT in the background... the number one thing people found jarring [with Vista] was that we changed the UI. ... That was ironic." Mossberg: Will you show us a little bit of Windows 7? Ballmer: "Sure! This is the smallest snippet of Windows 7. It's just a small little snippet."

Seventh Screenshot - Ironically of Windows 7's new UI.

7:29 - "This is 'likely to ship within three years of general availability of Vista.'" Demo time! It does multi-touch!

Eighth screenshot - Windows 7 UI

7:35 - They worked with the Surface team on the multi-touch stuff.Microsoft is re-thinking the whole user interface to better accommodate multi-touch for day to day use.

Ninth Screenshot - Maps UI

Tenth Screenshot - Maps UI

7:39 - Swisher and Mossberg: So, what does this represent? Is this the next phase of the way people will do day to day work on their computers? Gates: "We're at an interesting junction... in the years to come, the roles of speech, vision, ink, all of those will become huge. I showed what an intelligent whiteboard would be like."

7:43 - "For the person at home and the person at work, that interaction will change dramatically." Talking about the single-user interfaces we have today. Mossberg: This is 15-18 months from release, your friends in Cupertino probably have one more turn before you get this out the door. They have the iPhone, which is on the market today... is there a risk that the work you're doing here will look like they got there first? Ballmer: "There's a lot in Windows 7, and our goal's got to be, with our hardware partners, to produce fantastic PCs. ... We'll sell 270m PCs a year, and Apple will sell 10m. Apple is fantastically successful, and so are we."

7:45 - Ballmer's talking about Microsoft's "real opportunity" to improve things in the future -- which is another way of saying that things could be better, but there's no real specific commitment to making the Windows experience better.

7:47 - Mossberg's drilling Bill on the Mac vs. PC, Bill's retiscent. Ballmer: "Every share point Apple picks up is a share point we don't like. ... But it depends on what your goal is. We like selling 290m units. ... Our model is better." Mossberg: But you CAN'T be happy with this Vista situation? Ballmer: "What's the appropriate response? I kind of like what Bill already said." Gates: "You're kind of repeating yourself." Ouch. Big applause.

7:51 - Q from the internet: Do you feel the unsuccessful pursuit of Yahoo! has tarnished Microsoft at all? Ballmer: "No. ... at very least, people now know we're serious about our online business."

7:53 - Talking about the phone market, Mossberg and Ballmer are debating unit volume between Nokia, RIM, Windows Mobile, Apple. On Android, Ballmer: "It's another person taking another crack at the pie. ... Google comes late, without experience, and no clear business model. ... But we take them.

7:54 - Open floor for Gates as he transitions out of Microsoft: "It probably is the last time I'll get to speak here..." Nawwwwww. "Melinda will be speaking Thursday, you'll hear from here why this will be a fun journey."

7:58 - Audience questions, but unfortunately none have been all that interesting so far.

Themers, what the heck?

2008-05-25T07:32:00.001-04:00

Guys, I might not be a the greatest themer of all time, infact I'm on the bottom level, I've only made a handful of themes, and those were not that great, but do I seem unreasonable when I ask if the themers could keep in mind that I don't really want to modify about half a dozen files in order to get the theme to look nice? I mean, what if I want to have a different theme? I'd have to go back and restore every single file I modified, and unless I took the time to take note of every file I modified, well, I'm pretty fooked.

Also, do keep in mind that files tend to differ from language to language, for instance, if I'm running the English Vista Ultimate version, and the themer is running the French version of Vista Business, there could be incompatibilities. Also, SP1 just came out, and it could cause serious instability issues. So guys, keep the files down to a minimum, keep in mind that most users want a theme, not a conversion pack-in-a-rar. It makes it extremely difficult to actually use a theme when I need to change the forward and back buttons every single time I try to run a newer theme! So, after going through about a dozen themes, 10 of those requiring massive system file replacement, I'm back to using Aero Default.

Also, yes I'm running Vista again, I figured it was a problem with my chipset, and I downloaded and installed the latest drivers, so far as good.

Offtopic Discussion

2008-05-23T19:59:00.001-04:00

Alright, I'm parting my normal tech related material to talk about something that is increasingly bothering me. I browse about various stories on the interweb and seem to stumble upon various websites that tell the tale of atrocities by the United States in Iraq. Mainly, the use of White Phosphorus against military targets and civilians, which is by the way, a chemical weapon. The user of depleted uranium shells, which, by the way, leave the landscape they fight in littered with radioactive material. All this, and the RUMOR of the use of Napalm in Fallujah, which was banned by the United Nations.

I need to explain my position a little bit, I'm an American, I love my country and I'm proud to be one, but what I'm not proud of is the fact that the military uses increasingly contreversial methods of warfare, they they swore that they would never use. They've killed THOUSANDS of civilians, and to this day, Bush won't answer for any of it. Ever heard of the phrase, the buck stops here? Yeah, apparently not in this ass backwards administration.

Now for the news stories to back this stuff up, and the things I stumbled upon to seriously anger me.

Christian Science Monitor Finds Radioactive Material

BBC News: US to use depleted uranium shells

BBC News: US used white phosphorus in Iraq

Yeah, these are why I'm supporting the prosecution of George W. Bush for crimes agianst humanity.

Outside The Box, Sort Of

2008-05-12T12:24:00.002-04:00

I want to deviate a bit from what I've been posting about in the past few weeks. I want to make a side note as I sit here in Salisbury University's computer lab, at how DAMN COLD it is, I mean come on, it's the middle of May, and it's 54 F, now for those who are not exactly sure what the norm is for this time of year, we're talking in the 70's or 80's, that's a 20 to 30 degree difference.

Anyway, onto the tech. Today's topic is Windows Live Messenger and the censoring of several different domain types and words. Now I can understand stuff like Mediafire, I mean it CAN theoretically be used to spread various forms of malware, but deviantart? Come on, Microsoft isn't even in direct marketing with Deviantart, and even if they were, why censor DevArt? Are they afraid that someone's art is going to cause someone else an epileptic seizure or something? There are also several other domains that was censored, keyword here is "was".

"Greetings Messenger fans –As some of you noticed, we had a problem from Friday night to Saturday morning where our Messenger service was incorrectly blocking some legitimate IP addresses. We sincerely apologize for any difficulties this caused our users. And we want to thank those of you that reported this problem to us so that we could quickly fix it. Because of your help, the incorrect block was only in place for a few hours. As you can imagine, we are very serious about our efforts to block virus, malware and other harmful URLs from being passed on to our users. And we're continually working to improve this process so that we can keep our users safe without having a negative impact on your Messenger service."

So...it was a mistake? Pretty big mistake on their part, hopefully they can get their act together and make sure it doesn't happen again.

OS Chatter

2008-05-09T18:42:00.001-04:00

Alright so I admit I change my mind a lot about which OS to have installed on my machine at any given time. Sometimes I install Vista, enjoy it for a week or so, and then move back to XP, or I install Ubuntu via Wubi, and use that for a week or two before removing it, and falling back to Windows XP. The thing here is, the OS that I constantly fall back to is Windows XP, it's good, stable, familiar, and with Service Pack 3, it's even better than before, provided you install newer drivers, unlike me, curious as to why my OS was lagging up, and then finding I had drivers for my RealTek AC HD drivers from 2005.

I mean here I am sitting here now with Ubuntu 8.04, despite my bitching about it earlier, is a relatively solid Linux OS, and Windows XP. Honestly, if you've ever, EVER, wanted to get into Linux, there is no better time than now to get your feet wet in the Linux OS. Canonical's latest offering of Ubuntu comes with a clever little application that will create two virtual disks, one for the OS, and the other for the swap, and install a working, fully fledged installation of Ubuntu 8.04.

If you choose to get Ubuntu going, another awesome application, that is if you have an ATI or NVidia card, is Envy. Go to Synaptic Program Manager, you'll find it under the Administration tools, and search for it. Install it and it'll appear under Other/EnvyNG. Run it and choose your brand (nVidia/ATI), and it'll automatically detect your specific card, search for updated drivers, and install them for you.

Another little thing you might want to get, to have better/sleeker looking desktop, Emerald. Search for it under Synaptic, and install it. Then, go to System, sessions, add the command "replace --emerald" then log out, and log back in, next, visit Gnome-Look.org, and visit the Beryl section. You can import the themes via System/Emerald.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Information

2008-04-25T11:43:00.003-04:00

Microsoft recently announced that Windows XP Service Pack 3 has reached RTM, with that, and almost immediately, it leaked, reaching Torrent websites, and personal mirrors around the internet. I’ve even had a chance to test it myself, and I’m glad to say that it was well worth the wait, almost immediately I’ve noticed a performance increase on low end machines. For those individuals who haven’t had access to the build, Microsoft plans a phased release for the Service Pack.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is currently making it’s rounds to the OEMs, followed by general availability in Windows Update Microsoft Download Center. MSDN/Technet subscribers are next, getting it around May 02^nd. I’ll post the full availability dates at the end of this article. SP3 is to be the last Service Pack for Windows XP, as Microsoft intends to stop sales of the popular OS by June.

Detailed Release Schedule

Release to Manufacturing – April 21^st

OEM – April 21^st

Windows Update – April 29^th

Microsoft Downlaod Centre – April 29^th

MSDN/Technet Subscriber Download - May 2^nd

Windows XP SP3 Fulfillment Media – May 19^th

VL Customers via download – June 1^st

Automatic Updates – June 10^th

You can get more information on Service Pack 3, including the newest features that made it into RTM from Microsoft's documentation.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Overview

Windows XP SP3 Download

2008-04-23T13:48:00.002-04:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later, now the RTM of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP is finally available through less than conventional means. I'll continue to post links as I get them, as far as I know, this is the real deal.

HTTP Download - UK

Bittorrent Download

Windows XP SP3 + Other Stuff....

2008-04-23T07:48:00.001-04:00

Rather than making this a simple post about wanting to become more active in my blog, I'll put some meat and potatoes behind this post, and rant like I usually do.

If anyone's been following the current tech news, they'll know the debacle with Windows XP Service Pack 3. Granted I can understand Microsoft's strategy behind wanting to prolong the release of the thing in order to drive more users to Vista SP1, but they need to understand at this point that a lot of people are on XP because they WANT to be, not because they just failed to update, or not noticed that Vista is out. We'll pull example from Windows 98 -> ME -> 2000 -> XP. Consumer Windows users, the Average Joe who doesn't care what they're running, as long as it works, have never really caught whim of Windows 2000, it was an incredible OS, but it was mainly geared towards business users.

The point I'm trying to make is that, all OS upgrades since Windows 1.0, has had the bloat feel. Windows 98 users, who couldn't stand Windows ME, stayed with XP due to pretty much the same reasons many XP users refuse to upgrade to Vista. Unstableness, driver issues, irritating additions (subtraction even, as with the removal of native DOS), and so on. There will always, ALWAYS, be that feel of bloat with any Windows upgrade, that's just the way it is. Then the product stays out in the wild, more people user it, more hardware distributors create drivers for it, and the OS becomes more stable. This quickened with the implementation of Service Packs with Windows NT 4. Granted Average Joe consumers only got a feel for Service Packs in XP, since NT4, and 2000 were both business OS's.

I'm already seeing this with Windows Vista, granted there is a bit of bitterness, but for me it's time to move on and say farewell to Windows XP. Perhaps I fell into the ploy that Microsoft was trying to play with delaying SP3? Honestly, No, SP3 was RTM'd when I felt it was time for a final upgrade. I had an irritating time with nVidia drivers, but that's for another post at a later time.

The topics I tried to get at here was Microsoft, with delaying SP3 a bit to get Vista SP1 more exposure, probably didn't give them the results they were looking for, despite how well the OS is selling, it's still not doing half as well as XP, and probably never will, XP was THE perfect OS. There is honestly no doubt in my mind that Vista will take it's place with stability, it's just not it's time yet, and I'm holding out hopes that they've learned their lesson with Vista and put what they've learned into Windows 7. We'll just have to wait and see.

Digsby Widget - Give it a try!

2008-03-23T00:38:00.001-04:00

Well, I really got into Digsby, it's a pretty nice IM client, and honestly might be one of the best, so I'm going to give people who read this blog, a chance to have a chat with me, ask a question or just chat! :D Enjoy!

You can download Digsby Below, and expect a full review of the multi-IM client to follow shortly.

Download

Downloading Music, There is a gray area?

2008-03-20T12:28:00.001-04:00

Ah downloading music, the phrase often associated with pirates. Downloading music legally, associated with subscription users, example, iTunes, Napster, and so forth. For a long time there hasn't been much of a gray area, that little area that seems wrong, but could very well be perfectly legal. For years the RIAA and so forth have gone after pirates for sharing media with others, which is logical, share copyright material with public users, and get fined for it. However the method to their madness is a bit on the harsh side.

I'm not going to sit here and rant and rave about how the RIAA's less than legal methods, and their mafia like partner companies violate almost every privacy law in existence, as well attack, maliciously, into someone's computer to steal information, which by the way, is illegal too, and if found out, could jeopardize a case as it is a felony.

Anyway, I'm not going to tell you that there is an application called Youtube Downloader that downloads Youtube's .flv files and then can in turn convert said .flv files to .mp3. Oh wait, I am, why you ask? Well, because record labels place their music videos on Youtube, with a plethora of ads to pay the artist for it's music. Now this is where the gray area comes in, they didn't intend for their music videos to be downloaded and converted into .mp3 files, you could very well be breaking the very copyright laws your trying to avoid. Until then however, happy hunting.

*For the trollish little imps out there. I don't use this service myself, even though it's ingenious, never have, never will, I post this here for informational purposes, I listen to my music straight from Youtube, got a problem with that? Contact Youtube.

Windows Update Screw Up?

2008-03-18T13:06:00.002-04:00

Sorry about the lack of updates, I really had to evaluate the blogs I had, closed a few, and made this my primary tech related blog and article thing for the next couple of years. Now, onto the main reason I've posted here today, Windows Update in Vista, had a bit of a seizure today, and it could give some insight into what's to come in the near future.

As you can see, new items are available in Windows Update, primarily the inclusion of the Windows Live applications and services. I thought, NICE, now whenever I need to reinstall, I can get my Live applications from Windows Update when I update my 50+ updates for Windows Vista. (Compared to 120+ for Windows XP, plus drivers) I proceeded to install said updates, in fact, the ones marked in the screen shot, only to find that they didn't appear anywhere in my PC. I searched the installation folder (C:\Program Files\Windows Live usually), and nothing. No sign of the installation files anywhere.

Well, they appear as installed applications, now I wonder why they don't appear on my PC. Oh well, I guess I'll cut my losses and attempt to install Windows Live Writer so that I can continue my blog posting. Windows Live Installer picks up that I don't have writer and mail installed, so it installs and completes. Now I go back into installed updates, and it shows up twice. Alright, no harm no foul, as long as it doesn't cause any problems in the future.

I go back into Windows Update to notice that the updates no longer exist, save for the one coinciding with the recently installed Windows Live Writer. This makes me wonder, with the news that Service Pack 1 is coming relativly any day now, is Microsoft prepping for a bigger role in Windows Update for Vista than before? It appears so, as it looks they're working on fixing it so you can download various Windows applications straight from Windows Update itself.

Inactiveness

2008-02-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

I'm going to be a bit inactive as I continue to fight this very, very, nasty flu bug. I mean, I can't even stay up for more than three hours at a time.. D:

After that though things should begin to pick up.

-John

Orientation Sencitive Behavior ~ Foldable Display Prototypes

2008-02-04T04:43:00.000-05:00

Discovered something that could very easily be common place in our future, minus the wii-mote of course.

Foldable Display Prototypes

Got it

2008-01-30T02:25:00.001-05:00

Finally got my new PC the other day, must say I'm blown away by the performance of it...

Sorry for the crappy pics, my 10 year old webcam is .. old. :/

Pheonix Specs

2008-01-24T01:44:00.000-05:00

Windows XP Home Edition
AMD Athlon X2 64-bit Dual Core @ 2.2Ghz
2GB DDR2
Seagate 320GB Hard Drive
nVidia Geforce 7600 512MB PCI-E
18x DVD-RW Drive With Lightscribe Technology

V.S.S Enterprise

2008-01-24T01:29:00.001-05:00

Just got a look at a very impressive video over at CNN, of Virgin showing off the almost ready for production space ship program. Their first starship, which is a Space Ship Two model, is called Enterprise, with several other's to follow shortly. Virgin hopes to make starships that will allow one hundred thousand or more people to travel to space by the middle of the 21st century. They also stated that they want to build larger starships that can accommodate people like commercial aircraft can.

(sorry about the CNN watermarks, ripped these screenies straight from CNN video)

A small update..

2008-01-10T06:24:00.000-05:00

As a little update to Ubuntu 5.10 VMWare, the latest version of Ubuntu in a preinstalled VMWare enviroment is located below.

Ubuntu 7.10 VMWare Image

It'll give you instructions on how to enter the OS, as well as a username and password.

Inactiveness Explained..sort of

2008-01-08T08:47:00.001-05:00

I apologize for being inactive, this is mainly due to the part that a lot of things are happening tech wise over here, and the transition isn't being as smooth as I'd like it to be. Firstly, I'm trying to get a hold of a new machine, my Vista testing and other fun stuff can't continue as this machine isn't really capable of running Vista as smoothly as I'd like it to. It CAN run it, but I'm used to the speed of XP, and the issues with Vista are mainly performance issues. I'll list my specs below.

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2.0Ghz

1GB DDR SDRam

80GB Seagate HDD Partitioned three ways

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9550 256MB AGP 4x/8x

--Recommended Minimum Specs for Windows XP

1.0Ghz and up Intel Pentium III/AMD Athlon Processor and up

1GB Ram

30GB HDD

--Recommended Minimum Specs for Windows XP

2.0Ghz Intel P4/AMD Athlon Processor and up

2.0Ghz Ram

30GB HDD

Pretty no brainer, I haven't had a real chance to touch Vista, as my system isn't the greatest thing in the world, but those are the specs that I'd tell people they'd need to have at a bare minimum to run it nicely.

Also, I'm going to be getting an Xbox 360 with all the trimmings, so I will likely be a little inactive and when I am active, it'll be heavy in Xbox 360ness as I get my hands on Halo 3.. :)

Rant-Space 2007 Year in Review

2008-01-01T08:12:00.000-05:00

Wow I cannot believe I forgot to post this, go me..

How-To: Windows Live Mail & Gmail

Windows Live Suite Released <Oudated Version)

Obtain New IP on Static Network

Driver Magician Lite Review

Apple Safari Hits 3.03

Blurring The Grey Line

Longhorn Beta 1 Visual Style

Gmail Forwarding in Outlook 2007

Windows Live for TV Review Part 1

Windows Live for TV Review Part 2

Explanation for Stepping Back

2007-12-15T12:20:00.001-05:00

The reason mainly for those of you who are wondering, why I don't post in forums that often anymore, or talk or chat about tech anymore, is the community as a whole is corrupted to a dire point where the previously morally high individuals stoop to levels of leaking betas, and blabbing about features that are in an NDA'd beta. The POINT of having a beta is to product test features for a company, that brings a certain level of trust from said company not to divulge secrets about those features, which in turn get in the hands of competitors. Yet, time and time again, and for pretty much the entirety of this community, that trust is betrayed.

There are certain individuals that are sitting on a high level on that community hierarchy, with websites that bring in paid revenue. I'm talking about high up there websites, with high up there people who made this community into their career, which is pretty noble if you CAN deal with it. Ultimately they backstabbed, swindled, leaked,and sniveled their way to the top. These aren't just small forum goers, and bloggers, we're talking a name that's renowned and known within the tech community.

Then you get those individuals who LET it get to their heads, the pre-Madonna types. The type that think that the world revolves around them, and that they're some technological messiah. Yeah, you guys, while better than the individuals who back stab and swindle to get higher up their ladder. They're still quite annoying.

This is by no means an attack in general, but isn't there a single person out there who isn't corrupt, or is this community doomed to continue on this trend that not only hurts the community as a whole, but paints a pretty bad picture with people who look at the community from a stand point outside of it.

LoL VGCats

2007-12-09T05:15:00.001-05:00

Scott over at VGCats pulls out yet another hilarious flash video for those who played Portal. :D Could get annoying if you have no idea WHAT poral is. :3

Linky

Mount Daisen Stream & Information

2007-12-06T01:57:00.001-05:00

I recently found this stream of Mount Daisen, located in Honshū, Japan over at ustream.tv. Very beautiful place, and the individuals who visit the chat and run the channel or ustream, are the nicest on the internet.

Mount Daisen ~ Wikipedia

Daisen Kingdom ~ Ustream

Ok, What the HELL, ATI/AMD? AGP x1050-x1950 Problems Ignored Again!

2007-11-28T23:08:00.001-05:00

Alright, the problem is this, if you own an ATI AGP card, anywhere between X1050 to X1950 and beyond, and you install ATI's Catalyst driver set from 7.9 and up. It will effectively cripple your machine. DirectX will no longer function and directDraw, AGP Texture Acceleration, and Direct3D will disappear. They couldn't have not known about this problem! It's been plaguing users since Cat 7.8 in August! Thankfully there is a solution on the XP side, using Omega Drivers (Unofficial driver set built for ATI & nVidia cards), you will be able to install the latest Cat's. However for Vista users, you're screwed, the latest Catalyst driver sets you can install are 6.8, which is damn near criminal, considering there are a very large amount of performance increasing tweaks to the latest Catalyst drivers, increasing gaming performance by a very large measurable number.

My question to the general public on this one, is how the hell can AMD getting away with this one? Isn't anyone pissed off enough to raise hell about this problem? I know I'm not the only one having this problem, and in fact, there are about several hundred thousand of us who are having this very same problem. Why are they completely ignoring their AGP users and crippling their machines with little to no warning!

Scenario: Someone buys an older machine from eBay, equiped with an ATI AGP video card. Someone who doesn't have a great deal of knowledge about machines. They look at their computer, see that it's an ATI card, and are like.."Oh ok, I need to hop over to ATI's website to grab the latest drivers and software! :D". They deal with game.amd.com's AWFUL organization, and website interface. Find the card's driver for their particular operating system, and proceed to install. Since they probably want to rush through install, they choose the express install and get Steam(ing pile of #$@$) installed on their machine. On top of that, upon restart they find that they can't actually play any games since their machine's graphics card is CRIPPLED! So is their operating system, and guess what folks! It's OS independent, meaning you'll botch up a Vista machine too if you use an AGP ATI card.

With that, I would recommend not getting an ATI card, as they apparently don't give a single damn crap about their customers. Also, if you're experiencing this problem, run over to http://www.omegadrivers.net/ and grab yourself a copy of their drivers, you'll be glad you did, especially since it fixes this issue.

As food for though, have fun ATI, you're losing a lot of customers this way, and I'm pretty certain you'll end up getting a lawsuit filed against you sooner or later..

Canning the review?

2007-11-16T08:21:00.001-05:00

Simple answer, not completely. Long answer? Because at the present moment the review would have been used for Stardock advertisement without compensation, which I don't want any part of. I also feel as though I should distance myself from AeroXP, for the main reason that they have no idea who the leader is over there. You have Rob, who is a pretty responsible leader, got nothing against him. Then you have this other person, who ACTS like he runs the place, gets OVER DEFENSIVE when you question him running the forum, and runs his own little drama club in the background. He contacted me yesterday.. "Write a good review, and you get to keep your Expert ranking". I didn't think I deserved it to begin with, but what the fuck? Didn't the admin(s) say that there wasn't going to be anymore pseudo-admins? I certainly don't want to deal with some kid with a power trip, and someone with about 12 hours of MY constant writing flicking it around like it's a damn advertisement. Granted I WILL write a review for TweakVista, it won't be associated with AeroXP, and it'll contain a page or two of information, rather than 10 pages (12 posts) of information.

TweakVista Review Coming Next Week, as well as COMPLETELY free and unbiased reviews.

How-To: Windows Live Mail & Gmail

2007-11-07T11:49:00.001-05:00

There won't be as many pictures in this guide as in my previous one, but if you follow the instructions in this guide as closely as possible, you'll be on your way to enjoying your email from Google Mail in Windows Live Mail soon. :)

First thing right from the begining, you'll notice that the typical "Menu Bar", you know the one with File, Edit, View, Tools, Ations, and Help is missing. In order to allow us to EASILY add gmail over to Windows Live Mail, you'll have to rectify this. Click the Show Menu button, the button next to the Paint Brush, and the question mark on the right hand side of the client, and choose Show Menu. Ugly isn't it? Don't worry, you can set it right back once your done importing the email accounts.

Next thing to do, is to go to Tools in the newly revealed menu bar, and go to Accounts. You'll be presented with a new dialog box labeled Accounts. On the right hand side, choose Add, and then you'll be presented with an Add An Account box. Highlight email account, because that's the one you'll be wanting to import obviously, and choose Next.

In the Add an E-mail Account, where it shoes "E-mail address", type your gmail addy in there. Followed by your password, check remember password if you want. Next put your Display Name into last box. This part is important though, be sure to check Manually configure server settings for e-mail account, then click next.

Incoming Server Information----------------------------------------------

Ah there it is, slightly different, but still quite the same. The next part is where all the fun (sarcasm) settings go. We'll go ahead and go through it step by step.

"My incoming mail server is a (POP3) server." - Gmail uses POP3 forwarding in order to send your mail over to any mail client, so be sure to check POP3, not http.

"Incoming Server (pop.gmail.com)" - Pretty straightforward right? If you've configured any POP3 email address in the past, or followed the previous guide for Outlook 2007, you'll remember some of the settings from before, most email servers use a similar address with little variations, for example Comcast uses pop3.comcast.net. Leave the Port option alone, WLM will automatically set it to the correct setting when we check the next option

"Add a Checkmark to This Server requires a secure connection (SSL)" - You'll notice as I said above, that the port will automatically correct itself to 995 once you check this box.

"Log on using: Clear Text Authentication" - You'll want to choose Secure password authentication option from this select box, as Gmail requires this setting in order for your logon credentials to go through.

"Login ID (if different from e-mail address)" - normally it should say your username, but you'll need to change this so it reads Myusername@gmail.com.

Outgoing Server Information----------------------------------------------

"Outgoing server smtp.gmail.com" - Set this to smtp.gmail.com, and change the port to 465.

"Leave Checked This server requires a secure connection (SSL)" As above, leave this checked, or check it if it isn't already.

If there are any problems with these settings, please leave a comment and I'll investigate it and fix it. I was able to retrieve my email with these settings and you should also be able to aswell. Be sure to allow POP3 in your gmail settings before attempting to send/recieve your email.

Additional Links and Resources

Printable Copy - You'll need Microsoft Wordpad (Included with Windows) in order to view and print this. Hosted by Mediafire, as I don't have another HTTP mirror.

More Coming...

2007-11-07T10:28:00.001-05:00

The popularity of the blog entry for adding Google Mail accounts to Outlook 2007 went through the roof. I'm still getting comments on that, mostly positive thankfully. I was hoping Google would have updated their importing information for the newer versions of Windows Live Mail, but it looks like they have not. So I'll go ahead and post a How-To in similar fashion to the Outlook 2007 post, and add it to my blog as soon as possible.

I'll also post it in easy to print .txt format, because, well, white text on black background will likely drain a printer cartridge faster than printing out a black text on white background. So thanks for the feedback on that one. :)

Computer Rant

2007-11-03T07:18:00.001-04:00

I'm really unsure at this point, I've had to yet again move back to Windows XP in order to have a functional PC and I've always been a PC gamer, rather enjoying that part of the computer world more recently than ever. This isn't a regular rant about how I dislike Vista, I honestly don't, I just wish it was more usable, lighter and as vibrant as Windows XP. Now I know you'll say, "Vibrant? Aero Glass?". Honestly, I know, I love Aero glass, but at this point it bogs down the system so badly that using it on this older machine is a chore, even though it's smooth. The OS feels jagged, unfinished, unpolished, and I know a few friends who have moved away from the PC world entirely, finding sanctum on the Apple OS X front. I will be honest with the 2.3 users who read my blog, if I had the financial means to make the move, I would in a heartbeat. Leopard is very impressive, and even Tiger at this point, in comparative to the ageing Windows XP. Hell I even started using Ubuntu 7.10 Linux more than Windows, just because it's a breath of fresh air from the seven years of being a Windows XP user.

In all honesty, I believe Microsoft blew it, they were going very very strong, but they've locked down the PC hardware world and because of that, more appeal has moved to Apple's OS X, especially since it made such a huge impression with Leopard. You have Microsoft bringing in their proprietary multi player service, Xbox Live, to the PC platform. You know what that means? The day of free multiplayer of ANY sort on the PC platform soon could be coming to an end. If Microsoft locks it down anymore than it is now.

What's my game plan? Gaming on a console, while computing on the PC, especially since my next PC purchase will be a Mac Mini. I'm going to TRY and persuade my mother to get a Mac instead of a PC, she's trying to buy one herself, and I feel that at this point, it would be a waste of money, time and effort to buy a PC with Windows Vista included on it, or any other type of Windows solution. Oh, and to add another little tidbit of information in, the number of Hackintosh computers (Computers built and manufactured by Dell, HP, and others that were built to run Windows, that run a hacked or modified version of Apple's OS X software) is increasing. That should tell you something right there

Oh look, an update!

2007-10-18T15:03:00.001-04:00

Decided to finally update my blog after a few weeks of nothingness. A lot of things have happened since then, mainly, I became a GM (General Moderator) over at AeroXP.org, while it's slow, I can see why they hired me. We were low on staff at the time and my name came up. Anyway, I'm finally able to update this blog a little more steadily now.

Decided to finally bite the bullet and upgrade to Vista completely, despite my past rants on how crappy it is, the bugs are improving, and I have the OS configured to a level of usability that I couldn't do voluntarily. No real bugs or issues, I can feel the speed hit, but that's fine. I've modded it to allow third party themes and currently have it set to Royale, which so far, is a spitting image of it's XP Counter-Part.

Non-tech related,a good friend of mine recently got married, congratz goes to Ryan(BlueScreenOfDeath) & Haley Price.

Finally Comcast...

2007-09-15T15:10:00.001-04:00

Unsure wether or not I've written about my problems with Comcast in the past, but if not, I've had bandwidth problems since day 1. Basically during high volume times my download speed would be capped at 50 kbps (Kilobytes), out of a normal 1.1 mbps (megabytes), or 8856 kilobits. Now normally with their speed at night, it caps to somewhere around 12000 kilobits. Getting to the point, honestly. Anyway, Comcast has taken some slightly questionable methods of increasing their bandwidth, from limiting torrent traffic, to actually cutting off high downloaders. This apparently has helped tremendously, stabilizing their network to the point where high volume times are almost indistinguishable between normal (Non-speed boost) times. Since I don't download massive amounts of data, and I don't use torrents, this has been nothing but awesome on my end. However, for those warez monkies out there, your days are numbered, they're really cracking down.

While in my opinion this gives a shield of protection over it's users from lawsuits by the disgustingly sue-happy RIAA, it also impedes on some of the rights of the user, which need to be made more clearer on their Terms of Service agreements.

New Poll Opened

2007-09-07T21:34:00.001-04:00

Well, I received a few comments on how my guide on getting Gmail to work in Outlook 2007 was helpful, then it dawned on me that my layout isn't exactly printer friendly. In fact, if anyone actually tried to print anything from this blog, it'd probably down about half of their available black printer ink, considering the blog's black on grey color scheme. So that's the subject of my first poll for the forum, I know I have readers, the Google Analytics speaks for itself, and people do regularly read my blog, and I'd like to be as informative and helpful as I possibly can be.

If the poll option for creating a printer friendly version wins, I'll create .txt documents attached to each blog post and all the reviews and guides that includes the full unedited article from this blog, as well as the original post date, and links to the pictures. This will be in my opinion a lot easier on inkjet printers and it'll allow readers to print a copy out to keep for a rainy day.

I'd also like to extend a personal thank you for reading my blog, and responding in such a positive manner in regards to my articles. It means a lot.

New Windows Live Suite Released

2007-09-05T17:49:00.001-04:00

Today Microsoft unveiled a whole bunch of new releases centered around Windows Live. Included in this bunch are final versions of Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Messenger. A particular feature that I'm honestly happy about is the added support for Blogger's images inside of WLW, before this wasn't possible and would just error out. Anyway, to the pictures. :)

Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Writer

Rant-Space Browser Statistics

2007-09-04T09:05:00.001-04:00

Interesting to see that most of the users that do browse Rant-Space do it using Firefox. My blogs are directly linked to AeroXP, and Neowin.net, with most of the visitors coming from AeroXP itself. This information was obtained by Google Analytics, which was suggested to me by a fellow AeroXP community member to keep a general idea of how many people visit and read my blog.

Windows Vista ; Best OS EVAR!

2007-09-03T22:20:00.000-04:00

Obtain New IP on Static Network

2007-08-22T19:39:00.000-04:00

Next time you're talking to a Cable Tech Representative, don't let them tell you that you cannot change your IP at will at any time. It's quite simple and doesn't require anything fancy at all. All you need is to be running Windows, and knowledge in Command Prompt. I'm not going to bore you with the basics behind how your your cable company slaps a static IP address on you, instead I'll get right to the point.

Windows XP

Firstly, hold down the Windows flag button, and press R.

Type CMD to open Command Prompt.

Type ipconfig and jot down your IP address.

Type ipconfig /release.

Now reach behind your cable modem with a pen handy, and trigger the modem's reset button.

Wait for it to cycle completely on, then wait for your computer to tell you your connected to the network again.

In command prompt, tyle ipconfig /renew.

Type ipconfig again to make sure you're on a new IP address. :)

Windows Vista

Same steps as above, but instead of typing cmd in Run, go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, Right click Command Prompt, and choose Run as Administrator.

Now enjoy having a new IP address on your "Static" network.

Commenting...

2007-08-21T21:21:00.001-04:00

I opened the comments back up for people without blogspot accounts. When I did this before, I got spammed by trolls, so from here on out, IP address' are logged. Also, comments are subject to moderation before they appear, so if they don't appear right away, don't get pissy.]

Commenting is highly encouraged. :)

New Windows Live Writer Build

2007-08-21T11:14:00.001-04:00

Unsure exactly when this was released to the public, but a new build of Windows Live Writer is available from live.ideas.com, sporting everything from a new interface, performance, streamlined options for adding newer Blog accounts. New About dialog reads "Version 1.0 (12.0.1183.516). If anyone reads this, leave a comment if you guys have any idea when this newer build was released. I'll edit my blog entry, or write a new one with the release date.

Apparently it came out August 9th, and was made available on Connect and Ideas.live.com. Thanks Sep.

Youtube Downloader Review

2007-08-20T05:45:00.000-04:00

If your like me, you've come to love Youtube and everything that it is. However, being able to download videos from them and convert them to any other file on the fly, from an offline source has eluded me for quite some time. Sure I'm able to download them to .flv format, but what about being able to convert them? I used a web based converter for a few months now, Vixy.net, however, recently they started branding videos and have become generally slow and unreliable.

Youtube Downloader is a pretty self-explanatory light application that will download a youtube video to your computer, and afterwards, give you an option to convert it to several different video types, and one audio type (.mp3). This short review will show exactly how this application works.

First thing you want to do is nab the Youtube url from the movie's main page. You can either get this from the address bar, or the url box next to the video. The application monitors the clipboard so after you have copied it, all you need to do is return to the application and hit download video. At this time it'll download the file from the website to your computer in .flv (Flash Video). This might take some time, because from what I can tell, Youtube's download servers are quite slow..

After downloading the file, the option to convert the video will be available, simply tick the "Convert video (previously downloaded) from file" option, then point to the video you want to convert.

(List of Conversion Types)

Apple Quicktime (.mov)
Iphone Video (.mp4)
PSP Video (H.264 .mp4)
Cell Phone (H.263 .3GP)
Windows Media Video (V.7 .wmv)
XVid MPEG-4 Codec (.avi)
Mpeg Audio Layer 3 (.mp3)

It also allows for manual conversion.

The software is freeware and available from their website at http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

Why I Choose XP over Vista.

2007-08-16T01:52:00.000-04:00

This isn't an "OMG I HATE VISTA" blog entry, It's got it's ups, and downs. This is a calm and collected entry in my blog explaining why I cannot possibly deal with Vista at the moment. What I'll do is create two categories, a pro and con list. Anyway, the operating system has bombarded me with issues since Beta 1, none of those are persistent thankfully, however, equally frustrating. Let's take Beta 1 for example, the only released build of Vista that I ever had consistent blank blue screens, which I completely place the blame on drivers. For the next few builds, even past the first official build of Beta 2, it was smooth, with small and easy to deal with UI inconsistencies.

However, the second build of Beta 2 is where the trouble began, the OS's performance took a major nose dive. System resources began to get eaten up a much faster pace, creating times where I quite honestly had to restart DWM in order to regain speed and performance. I bugged this every build religiously, up until the last build before RTM, where it finally stopped. With this, the most frustrating bug of them all alleviated, I was finally content. RTM was close, and I honestly, as an active member of the beta testing team, felt as if the OS was ready.

RTM rolled by, and I was able to install Vista in September or November of 2006. Low and behold, a show stopping bug reared it's ugly head. My monitor, a Sceptre 19" LCD, replacement for my Acer 19" monitor that was stolen while I was in Buffalo, hated Vista for some unknown reason. If I were to boot directly into Vista's post-install setup, I'd be greeted with an "Out of Range" error on my monitor. This is a driver issue with Vista's ATi Radeon driver, that causes my monitor to go "out of range" at 1280x1024 at 75Hz. To alleviate this, I need to F8 into the "special menu" just after the last reboot of setup. Choose "Low Resolution (640x480)", and continue setup that way. It even goes "Out of Range" after setup, if I select 1280x1024 75hz. I would need to set my res to 1280, then make sure that 60hz was selected in my Monitor settings. Installing ATi/AMD's latest Catalyst drivers for Vista fixes this problem.

Now I know my PC isn't a spring chicken, but it certainly isn't completely obsolete.
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
SSE1
3DNow
MMX
1GB DDR-SDram
80GB Seagate partitioned four ways.
ATi Radeon 9550 256MB AGP 8x (Probably the issue here, alongside my ram)

The OS runs nicely, for about a few hours, then begins to crap out. I would need to disable Windows Search, Scheduled Disk Defrag, Scheduled Windows Defender Scans, IPv6 for network improvements, Windows Sidebar, System Restore (To save space, and I never use it, even on XP), UAC (Because I don't need MS to ask me stupid questions constantly).

Apps I need to install to get a DECENT user experience.
Perfect Disk
Because the defragger included in Vista is absolute garbage.

TeraCopy
Let's compare.. 600MB (Ten minute transfer time with default file transfer)
600MB (Two minute or less transfer time with Teracopy)
Foobar2000
WMP is the slowest piece of garbage I have ever seen in a default install since Windows Me!

Now .. Vista does have it's advantages, for instance, the OS sits inside a sandbox mode, you're able to modify system files without having to restart, a log out would do it. It's more secure, with UAC enabled it's almost impossible for "Joe User" to get a virus, or a form of malware, provided "Joe User" isn't a flaming idiot and doesn't accept the UAC prompt.

Now I know for a FACT that Vista will run perfectly on a bleedingly modern machine, considering it's not running any Creative or Nvidia devices, ugh, the horror stories I've heard. I also know Windows XP had close to these issues when it first came out, it was slow as piss on the moderate to low end machines of the time and we had a lot of "Windows 98 or Bust!" statements towards the OS. I guess I'm one of those "Windows xp or Bust!" people. Sure things will get better, the initial reports from users getting a hold of Service Pack 1 for Vista speak of the performance increase. I just cannot honestly use the damn OS until it gets more stable, and gains better support.

Update on my IPv6 findings

2007-08-13T12:40:00.001-04:00

Well with some sleep behind me, I can only say Holy.. Crap! placed in a good way. I'll write out a guide with exact details, but as far as I know, this fixes the slow speed in Vista while using torrents.

Torrenting on Vista? Think Again..

2007-08-13T06:30:00.001-04:00

Now before the choir boys with their perfect little halos (the little rings, not the game) chime in and state at how bad piracy is, I'll pre-empt it with.. (Seriously, you guys are a bunch of fucking hypocrites)

I don't condone piracy, or downloading of copyright material, I use torrent downloads for World of Warcraft patches, Linux distros, and podcast mirrors.

Good, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, oh, and if there are any children near the monitor, cover their eyes, this isn't going to be pretty. Torrenting on Vista is BUGGERED, why, you ask? Well, simply because Microsoft thought they'd spifferize their OS by including a not so handy little item called IPv6. Now, why is "Windows Me's mentally impaired, malformed and defective mutant baby" touting such a protocol? For their built in P2P applications of course! I honestly do not know of any single ISP that actually uses IPv6 for their network, certainly wouldn't want to, with how buggy it is. To torrenting programs, and firewall software, this is a damn nightmare. Microsoft has shown next to no documentation for developers, so that they might, oh I don't know, adapt better!

The symptoms are maddening, programs complaining that ports are blocked, no matter how many god damn times you try and unblock them, they WILL stay blocked, and will continue to disallow connections to your computer. If they don't cripple the Torrent connection speed, IPv6 will slow it down to a complete and screeching mother fucking halt. All this for a select few applications to use it's technology. I qoute, right from Microsoft's website.

"If you disable IPv6, you will not be able to use Windows Meeting Space or any application that relies on the Windows Peer-to-Peer Networking platform or the Teredo transition technology."

Now, I've been on the web a while, I don't run this PC in a business environment, if I were, I certainly wouldn't run a torrenting program, despite it's legality. I've never even HEARD of the Teredo transition technology. This PC doesn't use WiFi to connect to the network I'm in, so I'm good. Really, M$ honestly should give people a choice on wether to enable or disable this crippling protocol more easily, like, perhaps right when the connection is first established, similar to when it asks for "Home, Work, Public.." or whatever.

Now..to get rid of it..

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/ipv6/ipv6faq.mspx

and run "netsh interface ipv6 set global randomizeidentifiers=disabled" in command prompt. Restart, of course, since Windows is so awesome that nothing can be done without the complete restarting of the machine. There you go, you should be rid of IPv6, well, disabled, but yeah. You'll notice right away that your torrenting applications will connect normally.

Oh, and if you have Zone Alarm, fucking get rid of it, if you have it installed, most likely your applications, when you start them, will fail to start and become STUCK (Yes, literally stuck, selecting it and choosing "End Process" will do jack), and you'll need to either end ZA, or restart your computer. If you decide to end ZA and restart it, it will completely disable your network connectivity, and bugger your machine even more.

World of Warcraft... The Movie!

2007-08-08T19:18:00.000-04:00

A little quote that most WoW gamers will find interesting...

Representatives from Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures hosted a panel at the BlizzCon gaming festival in Anaheim, Calif., over the weekend in which they discussed the upcoming film based on the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, according to video-game blog Kotaku.

Speaking at the panel were Blizzard's Paul Sams and Chris Metzen, as well as Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull and Chief Creative Officer Jon Jashni. They confirmed that the film will be live-action and will feature some computer-generated environments and effects. The script is still in development, but according to Metzen, the story will take place about a year before the events of World of Warcraft and will be told from the Alliance perspective. There is no director attached yet, but the producers are anticipating a release date in 2009.

Source

A few ways to ease File Transfer Speed woes

2007-08-07T07:17:00.001-04:00

Any Vista user will tell you that the file transfer speeds, even with this speed boost, is still painfully, and almost unbearably slow. Let's say you archive some files in XP, to save some space. You're looking at a nearly triple speed loss, regardless of what your machine specs, transferring files from partition to partition, or file archive (.zip, using Vista's default file transfer) to another partition, will be stupidly slow. Being a Vista user myself, I was completely discontent with how this was, so I figured a few work arounds with a couple of applications that seemed to ease the pain.

Firstly, your .rar, .zip, etc. file archives. Do yourself a favor now and download and install Winrar. It is completely unaffected by Vista's craptastic transfer speeds.

WinRAR ~ Unfortunately, it's shareware, it doesn't stop functionality after the trial period ends, it just nags you constantly.

Second application you might want to pick up, is TeraCopy. What this application does is that it integrates into the shell and replaces Vista's file transfer app. This app is amazing in Vista, transfer speeds with it rival that of Windows XP, and might even be a little bit faster. What this application does not cover however, is transferring files from an archive to a portable device, such as a thumb drive. However, due to WinRAR's installation, it first unzips it to a temporary directory, and THEN moves it to a portable device, causing no slowdown using Vista's default file transfer app.

TeraCopy ~ The freeware version is just as good as the Pro version, which has added functionality in the right click menus. You can find the Pro version at their main website, CodeSector.com.

Interesting...

2007-08-04T02:11:00.001-04:00

Decided to switch over to the new template system that Blogger offers, however there are some odd going ons with the layout.. For instance, they totally off-centered my new page logo. Screwed up the About Me section, and clipped a few other things, creating a total and complete mess of my layout. At least I don't need to edit the HTML directly in order to add or remove sidebar sections. -_-

Oh well, I removed the About Me section, since it was only wasting space anyhow, and I plan to pull more bloggers into this website.

...CRAP..forgot the damn dev chat! .v.

Various Changes + Rant-space.com

2007-08-04T01:25:00.000-04:00

Well now, for the few that actually visit this website, you'll notice that I've changed a few things. Firstly, I removed the AIM Wimzi Test, removed some distasteful links and added some in their place. Changed the blog name to match Rant-Space.com, which was an old blog project of mine, built in OfficeLive. Thinking of a UI change, oh well, we'll see. :)

Currently waiting for a new App to review, since I get most of my app stuffs from Neowin.net, and since that driver backup utility, I really haven't seen anything to keep my interests.

Driver Magician Lite Review

2007-08-03T07:36:00.001-04:00

I must admit I really haven't been into loading a whole bunch of applications into Vista (XP is another story), as I have a hard drive that's quite limited on space. (20GB for Vista) However I guess now is a good time to start, and half the point of the reviews is to archive the applications so that I may download them again at a future date.

The first in a set of reviews is for an application called "Driver Magician Lite". What it basically does, is look through your device list, locate the drivers to said devices, shows wether or not the driver is installed in your operating system by default, and if it isn't, clearly marks it so that you could easily backup the drivers for the device. The application comes in two flavors, the "lite" version, which is freeware, and the full version, which requires purchasing in order to get the full use of the download. This review will focus on the "lite" version, since the full version requires a payment of 29.95 to use fully.

When the application is first loaded up onto the computer, you're presented with a list of hardware that's currently installed on the machine. As said earlier, the application clearly marks which drivers that come pre-installed on the Windows machine. The application window itself is quite clean, broken down into several groups, "Driver Description, Class, Version, Date, Provider." Unfortunately, when one attempts to resize the application window itself, it bugs and distorts, then jolts back to it's original size. Also, clicking on the top category name will result in, well, nothing at all, it doesn't sort the application names out in any shape or form. There is also, as stated earlier, a box just below the driver list which gives detailed information of the specific driver. Below that, in the "lite" version, is a list of three options.

Start Backup ~ Which allows you to easily backup the drivers you selected in the driver list.

Select All ~ Self-explanatory.

About ~ Pretty self explanatory as well. (See screenshot below)

After choosing Star Backup, you're presented with a Browse for Folder window, which, quite honestly, is lacking the "Create Folder" option, which could have been quite handy for this type of application. If you haven't created a folder before hand, you'll have to hit Cancel, and create one, then go back into "Backup". For this I've chosen the only two drivers that do not come included with Vista, the application places the drivers into two clearly labeled folders.

Honestly, the application is quite handy once you get past the many UI bugs, could save some time and trouble, however, it isn't completely useful in my case, since the only two drivers that are not included can easily be installed by ATi/AMD's driver installer. However, for those with a huge list of drivers that need to be installed, it saves quite a bit of time. The full version, which carries the price tag of $29.95 USD, includes the ability to restore the hardware from those backed up drivers. As well as many other features that are not found in the "lite" version.

Drive Magician Homepage

I apologize for the un-professional look of this blog entry, blogger's interface is as ugly and hard to deal with as Geocities's old "Create a Website" feature. You get this TINY little box to edit and write posts, of which I could have completely ignored and used Windows Live Writer to post with, if Google hadn't locked image uploading.. -End of angry rant-