PC Tips for Vista SP2 HD Audio Controller

With the advent of Windows Vista, Microsoft praised the boost in energy consumption efficiency in comparison with Windows XP. Still, there are exceptions to every rule. And while Vista indeed uses less energy over XP, users of the operating system can still experience excessive power use. One such example involves Vista SP2 and earlier during sleep or hibernation, and the HD audio controller, the Redmond-based company explained. The software giant has noted that there are two scenarios in which Vista SP2 sucks more power than it should.

“If you put the computer to sleep or into hibernation when it is running on AC power, the high definition (HD) audio controller continues to use power. Additionally, even after the computer transitions to DC power while the computer is asleep or in hibernation, the HD audio controller still uses power. This behavior persists even though you disable the ‘Allow this device to wake the computer’ option in the HD audio controller properties,” Microsoft explained.

In addition, the company has revealed that there is also an issue associated with the Wake on Ring properties not responding to the configuration introduced by users. “After you disable the ‘Allow this device to wake the computer’ option in the HD audio controller properties, the Wake on Ring feature still wakes the computer from sleep or hibernation,” Microsoft stated.

A hotfix is currently being offered specifically to customers affected by this issue, the company underlined. Users that have experienced problems with high levels of power consumption because of the HD audio controller running Windows Vista SP1 or SP2 need to contact Microsoft and get the hotfix.

“If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix,” the software giant added.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PC Tips for Vista to XP Copying Performance being Slower

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If you have more than one operating system installed on your PC for example, you may have both Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta installed – your computer displays a menu asking you which operating system you want to load. If you don’t select an operating system within 30 seconds, it automatically loads your default operating system.

You can cut the amount of time your computer waits for your input before loading Windows Vista by going back to Msconfig and selecting the Boot tab. Where it says Timeout, change the number to a lower setting, but give yourself enough time to actually make your choice. If you only have Windows Vista installed on your machine, you don’t need to complete this step.

Fix notifications

Windows Vista is great at letting you know if there’s a problem with your computer. Your antivirus program should also alert you to potential problems, such as when a virus has been found or if you haven’t downloaded and installed the latest update for the software.

These notifications usually pop up from the notification area when you boot into Windows Vista, and on a computer that’s already struggling, the appearance of such messages could slow down the start-up time even further. You can save a few seconds by making sure that you always read all the notifications and subsequently follow their recommendations to fix the problems.

Not only will this stop the notification from popping up on your screen again, but it will probably also help your computer in other ways.

Change the boot order

When your PC is turned on it searches all its drives, such as hard drives and DVD drives, for boot files to load Windows Vista. These files are always on your primary hard drive, but your PC may search your DVD drives, floppy drives and other places before searching the correct hard drive, and this can add seconds to your startup.

To save time you can change the order that your computer searches your drives, making sure that the drive that Windows Vista is installed on is searched first. To do this you need to enter your computer’s BIOS, which is accessed when your computer is first turned on, before Windows Vista starts.

The method of accessing the BIOS varies from computer to computer – you need to either hold down Delete or sometimes F12. Once inside the BIOS you should see a menu option called something like Advanced BIOS Features. If you have more than one hard drive in your computer, select Hard Disk Boot Priority and select the hard drive that holds Windows Vista.

There should also be a menu option called something like Boot Priority. Select this, and then make sure that Hard Disk is first, followed by CDROM. There may also be an option called Quick Power On Self Test. Select this and make sure it’s enabled. When your PC is first turned on, it runs a number of tests to make sure everything is running properly. Some of these tests are more important than others, and by enabling Quick Power On Self Test your PC skips some of the less important tests, which speeds up your boot times.

Finally, there may be an option called Boot Up Floppy Seek. If you have that option in the BIOS, select it and then disable it. This is a test your computer runs on your floppy disk drive. These are an old form of media, and your PC either won’t have one, or you’ll hardly ever use it, so testing it is unnecessary.

Once you’ve finished in the BIOS choose Save and then Exit. Your computer’s BIOS might be slightly different, so don’t panic if the menus are laid out or named differently to how we’ve said. If in doubt, check the BIOS manual that came with your computer, or on the internet.

Tweak the BIOS to cut start-up time

1 MAIN MENU The main menu of your BIOS should look something like this. Although there are lots of intimidating-sounding options to choose from in this menu, you need only concern yourself with Advanced BIOS Features.

2. SELECTING THE BOOT DEVICE To speed up your computer’s startup, make sure that your first boot device is Hard Disk. Make sure you set your Second Boot Device to CDROM, in case you need to boot from the Windows Vista DVD.

3. SAVE AND EXIT Once you’ve made the changes you want, press Esc to exit the BIOS. You’ll be asked if you want to save your changes. Press Y to save, or N to exit without saving.

Result: Changing settings in the BIOS made the computer load up Windows Vista quicker than before.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PC Tips for making Windows Vista boot faster

The time it takes for your computer to start up and run has been massively improved under Windows Vista. One of the reasons older versions of Windows, such as Windows 95 and Windows 98, took so long to boot up was because those versions of Windows were running on top of another operating system MSDOS.

With Windows Vista this is no longer the case, so start-up times are a lot faster. If you have a brand new computer or a fresh installation of Windows Vista, it will take no time at all for your PC to start up, so you can begin using your favourite programs at once. Unfortunately, after a while, with the more programs you install and the more files you have on your PC, you may begin to notice that your computer takes longer and longer to start up. Before you know it, you’ll be able to get up, make a cup of tea and drink it while waiting for Windows Vista to load. When things get this bad, you know you have to do something about it.

We recently asked visitors to the pctipsbox.com website how long it took for their PCs to start. The results varied from less than a minute to over ten!

There are plenty of factors that could make your PC startup grind to a halt, so there are plenty of tweaks to try to get your PC starting up in a flash. It’s all very well listing these tweaks, but do they work?

We have a PC at home packed with so much stuff that it takes an age to load Windows Vista, so we decided to test the tweaks to find out how much time we could save.

First things first – Start-up slow-down

We knew that our PC was slow to start, but when we timed it and saw that it took nearly six and a half minutes from the moment we pressed the on button to when the computer had loaded all the start-up programs and was actually usable, we knew that something needed to be done.

Our first port of call was to check out the Startup folder by going to Start > All Programs > Startup. The Startup folder can be a really useful feature of Windows Vista because you can place shortcuts to your favourite programs in there and they will load up when Windows Vista starts.

The problem is, if there are too many programs in there, it will slow down your computer’s startup as your computer loads them all. Deleting the shortcuts from this folder (don’t worry, it won’t delete the actual programs) will certainly help speed things up. Not all programs that load themselves when your computer starts appear in the Startup folder, however.

Take a look at the Notification area of your Taskbar, which is on the bottom right-hand corner of your desktop next to the clock, to see if there are a lot of icons there. Most of these icons are for programs that run in background, and with all of them starting up when you turn on your computer, it will definitely slow it down.

Many of these programs can be safely prevented from starting up automatically, so you only load them as and when you need to. Most of the time you can right-click the icon and either open the program or go straight to the program’s options or preferences, and from there clear a box that says something like ‘Run this program when Windows starts’.

If there are any programs that you don’t need any more at all, go ahead and uninstall them to get an extra speed boost.

Result: After deleting four shortcuts from the Startup folder and cutting down the Notification icons from a massive 19 down to seven, we saw a huge improvement in the computer’s start-up speed.

Going in deeper

Not all programs give the option to prevent them from automatically starting up. To disable more stubborn programs, we went in to the powerful Msconfig utility. Before using this you should create a Restore point so you can revert your PC back to its former settings should anything go wrong.

Click Start and type msconfig. Click the Startup tab and you’ll see a list of programs, the name of the manufacturer of each program, and the program’s path (where it’s kept on your hard drive). Using all this information you can tell whether these programs are essential to making your PC run properly.

As a general rule, don’t disable any programs from Microsoft because these are usually vital for Windows Vista. Any drivers or programs related to your graphics card and other hardware should be left alone as well. Once you’ve disabled the programs you want, exit Msconfig and restart your PC.

If there are any problems or error messages, make a note and go back into Msconfig and check the boxes of the problem programs. You can also stop some services running on startup. Only stop them if you’re sure that you don’t need them. Again, no Microsoft services should be turned off.

If there are any services you want to stop, it’s a good idea to search for the service on the internet to make sure it’s okay to do so. Once again, if there are any problems, open Msconfig again and restart the services.

Use Msconfig to disable more programs at startup

1. LAUNCH MSCONFIG Msconfig is a powerful application that’s usually only used by advanced computer users. This is why it doesn’t have a snazzy name, and why you won’t find it in the Start Menu. To launch it click Start and type msconfig into the search box.

2. TICK THE BOXES Click the Startup tab and then in the Startup Item column clear the boxes of the programs you wish to prevent from loading on startup. Be careful which programs you deselect, however…

3. RESTART YOUR PC For these changes to take effect you’ll need to restart your PC. Make sure you have saved all your work, and then click Restart. This is a good opportunity to examine the improvements that your changes have made so far.

Result: We found a number of programs that didn’t need to load on startup, so we unchecked them. We also found a couple of services that ran on startup that were used by old programs we had long ago uninstalled, so we safely stopped them.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PC Tips for Windows 7 Calculator to Vista

Windows 7 will most likely offer users a pleasant surprise, at least through its redefined interface and the set of redesigned tools it brings. The plain old calculator suffered a beautiful transformation into a more consumer-oriented product capable of serving both more science prone users as well as the average Joe.

As you probably know, the application can be downloaded as a standalone product here, and run from portable devices with no problem at all, as it requires no installation; a double click on the executable will suffice to launch it. It works nicely on Vista but I bet that you’d appreciate complete integration in the operating system so that it would be automatically launched instead of the plain old version of Windows Calculator.

The procedure is actually a matter of gaining full control of the much dreaded, vital file keeper, System32 folder. Normally, you do not have access to modifying the data in it, not even if you run your account in administrator mode or become the administrator by running the command net user administrator /active:Yes in Command Prompt.

But there are plenty of workarounds to this and besides running Take Ownership registry tweaks, or using third-party software such as Unlocker to cut off all the strings to a file and be able to bend it your way, there is also a very easy but pretty dangerous solution. It is a matter of permission that can be fixed from the Properties of the System32 folder.

So get into System32’s properties and access the Security tab. Next click on “Advanced” button in the lower part of the window. Right now you should be in Permissions tab that lists all permission entries and you can safely click on the Edit button. Another Permissions window pops up listing once more the permission entries. Here’s where you get to select the desired user you want to grant full control over System32 folder and edit the security approvals. Simply check the Full control checkbox to gain complete power over the folder. OK everything and that is it.

If all this seems like mumbo jumbo to you and it is too difficult to understand, I’ll translate it for you, with the help of these easy to follow steps:

Select folder > right click > Properties > Security tab > click Advanced > click Edit > select desired user > click Edit > check Full control box > OK > OK > OK > OK

- you will have to wait for a while for the new permissions to be set.

Now that full control over the System32 folder is in your hands, it is time to replace the old Windows Calculator with the fresh Windows 7 one. In my case I made a backup copy of the old app by adding an underscore (“_”) suffix to its name, just in case.

The original files that need to be replaced are calc.exe located in the root of System32 and calc.exe.mui in the “en-US” folder of System32. As mentioned before, I made backups to these, just in case, and I recommend you do the same. If you do this, all it takes to finish the process is copying the files in Windows 7 Calculator archive in the exact places with the original ones.

If all the steps have been followed correctly, Windows 7 Calculator should be the default calculator for your system. And if you took my advice and renamed the original files, you will have access to the old calculator as well by typing the new given name in the Run box (in my case calc_).

Once all this is done I suggest you remove the full control so that no unfortunate accidents take place because System32 is a very sensitive folder for the system. If you can’t remember the previous permissions, in my case they were limited to Traverse folder / execute file, List folder / read data, Read attributes, Read extended attributes and Read permissions. As you probably notice there is no write permission granted so this should be enough hint for you not to mess around with the data.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The borders around system windows, such as dialog boxes and the Control Panel, are transparent in Windows Vista’s Aero interface. If you’d like, you can make those transparent borders larger or smaller:

1. Right-click the Desktop and select Personalize.
2. Click Windows Color and Appearance.
3. Click “Open classic appearance properties” for more color options.
4. From the dialog box that appears, make sure that Windows Aero is selected as the color scheme. Click the Advanced button on the right side of the dialog box.
5. Select “Border Padding” in the Item drop-down box. To change the size of the border, type a new size for the border. (The default is 4.) Click OK, then OK again. The sizes of the borders will now change.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PC Tips for Adding elevated Command Prompt for Vista

Add an elevated Command Prompt Windows power users know that a command prompt (Cmd.exe) is the fastest way to many tasks–much faster than digging through menus and tabbed dialog boxes. In Windows Vista, this is more true than ever, thanks to User Account Control. To get maximum mileage out of the command prompt, add a shortcut to the Start menu and configure it to run as an Administrator. Here’s how:

1. Click Start and type cmd in the Search box. This should produce a list consisting of one entry: the shortcut to the Windows Command Processor, cmd.
2. Right-click the cmd shortcut and choose Pin to Start Menu.
3. Click Start again. Right-click the Command Prompt shortcut you just added to the Start menu and choose Properties.
4. Click the Advanced button and click to select the Run as administrator checkbox.
5. Click OK to save your changes.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It is really easy to set Windows XP to delete the contents of your Temp folder (or run any other commands) on shutdown. There are numerous reasons why you might want to delete your Temporary files when you shutdown Windows XP. Your Temporary files folder can get extremely large. Take a look at what is in C:\WINDOWS\Temp.
The first step is to install Xecutor. You can download Xecutor from the Xpertdesign homepage.

The second step is to create a batch file that will delete your temporary files on shutdown. To do this open up notepad and type the following line:
del /Q G:\WINDOWS\Temp save your file as tempdelete.bat. Alternatively, you can download my tempdelete.bat file if you prefer.

The third step is to configure Xecutor to run the tempdelete.bat file on shutdown. Open Xecutor, and answer no to the stream of questions
it prompts you with the first time you run it. Next choose the shutdown tab and add tempdelete.bat file. This is shown below:

After you hit OK you will now see tempdelete.bat in the shutdown tab of Xecutor.

Now just close Xecutor and it will run in your system tray. The last step is to drag the Xecutor icon from your desktop into your Startup folder located in Start >> All Programs >> Startup so that Xecutor starts when you start Windows.

You are all set, now when you shutdown Windows, your temporary files will be deleted, as well. You can add other commands the same way (i.e., delete cookies, delete My Documents, etc.).

What other commands do you think would be useful to run at Shutdown? Let us know in the comments.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PC Tips for Vista Defender

Users who put their faith in Vista’s new security features and Microsoft’s Windows Defender antispyware product may find themselves under attack from spyware all the same, according to the results of a study by Webroot, a leading antispyware vendor and Microsoft competitor.

On Thursday, the company released the results of what it claimed was a two-week study of Windows Defender that showed the product missed 84 percent of a sample set of 25 spyware and malicious code samples. The programs that slipped by were a mix of spyware, Trojan horse programs, and keyloggers. While many were not Vista compatible and simply crashed, others were able to install on Vista systems, said Gerhard Eschelbeck, Chief Technology Officer at Webroot. Eschelbeck identified variants of common malware programs like DollarRevenue Trojan, PeperTrojan, and Playboydialler that made it by Windows Defender. Some of the variants were recently released, though others dated back to 2006, he said. Of the four programs Windows Defender did stop, most were non-malicious adware, he added.

“We wanted to validate the strong claims out of the industry that Vista was going to be a security solution for everybody and everything,” Eschelbeck said.

Webroot picked the malicious code samples from tens of thousands of samples collected on its Phileas spyware scanning network. Webroot’s Spy Sweeper product spotted all of the samples.

When asked, Eschelbeck acknowledged that 25 samples was a tiny fraction of Webroot’s database of tens of thousands of malicious code samples. He also acknowledged that it may be possible for Microsoft or other competitors to pick samples of malicious code that would evade Webroot’s Spy Sweeper product, given advanced knowledge of how Spy Sweeper’s detection features worked.

“Nothing’s impossible,” Eschelbeck said.

A Microsoft representative challenged the study is finding, saying the company was confident in Windows Defender’s ability “to make the user is computing experience a safer one.”

The company also noted that Vista was “the most secure version of Windows to date” and that the operating system, “includes fundamental architectural changes that will help make customers more secure from evolving threats, including worms, viruses, and malware.

These improvements minimize the operating system is attack surface area, which in turn improves system and application integrity and helps organizations more securely manage and isolate their networks.”

Eschelbeck said the purpose of the study wasn’t to make invidious comparisons between the two products, but to raise questions about the detection capabilities and management of the Windows Defender product as Microsoft expands its profile as an enterprise and consumer security software vendor. “It’s important to leave the interpretation up to individuals,” he said. “People need to make their own conclusions about it.”

Eschelbeck said Microsoft updates Windows Defender’s spyware definitions weekly — far too infrequently for the fast-moving malicious code scene. Eschelbeck also warned that malicious code authors would soon adapt to the architectural changes in Windows Vista that stopped many of the malicious code samples that got past Defender from working.

Microsoft, in its e-mail statement, noted that “no operating system is 100% secure” and that users should employ a defense in depth strategy involving software updates, a firewall, and anti-virus/anti-spyware program, “whether a Microsoft or third party solution.”

Webroot, which is venture-funded, was an early pioneer in the antispyware software space and is one of the leading sellers of antispyware software to consumers. However, the company’s prospects have been hurt by Microsoft’s entry into the desktop and enterprise security business and the company’s decision to offer Windows Defender as a free download.

The Webroot study is just the latest in a salvo of company-sponsored studies that seek to undermine the credibility of competing security products.

In September, a Microsoft-sponsored study by 3Sharp compared antiphishing toolbars by Google/Firefox, AOL, EarthLink, Geotrust, McAfee, and others and found the Internet Explorer antiphishing technology the most accurate. The Mozilla Foundation fired back in November with a competing study by SmartWare that found the Firefox antiphishing technology better than that of Internet Explorer. A subsequent independent study by Carnegie Mellon concluded that few of the available anti-phishing products are very reliable.

Incoming search terms for the article:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.