Vista Notes
 

Editions:

Vista comes in 5 editions, and under each of these, there is a 32-bit and 64-bit version. for each ov those, there is a retail and an OEM (System Builders) version.
  • Ultimate
  • Home Premium
  • Home Basic
  • Business
  • Enterprise
I know that Ultimate, Home Premium, and Business contain a backup program (the venerable ntbackup.exe I would assume).
If you get a system, make sure you get at least Home Premium, not Home Basic. Home Basic is probably what you will get on a Dell, HP, Compaq, and the like. Don't let them sell you short. If you are buying a PC from a store, pick your OS wisely, because not everything will run on Home Basic! one example is the Vista Battery Saver - it requires Home Premium.

Upgrades

  • XP Pro x64 → Vista anything, but requires clean install
  • XP Pro → Vista Business,Ultimate (others require clean install)
  • XP Media Center → Vista Home Premium,Ultimate (others require clean install)
  • XP Home → Vista anything
  • Windows 2000 → Vista anything, but will require clean install

32/64-bit

  • The 64-bit version of XP or Vista does not include the ability to run DOS programs.
  • The 64-bit version of Vista or XP with Windows Media player 11 is required to play HD content when codecs come out.
  • 64-bit version has a locked-down kernel, called PatchGuard, which prevents both antivirus companies and spyware alike from embedding themselves into the kernel. 32-bit version does not have this.

Backup

If making backups is important to you, you should consider Vista Business or Ultimate. I think these are the only 2 versions that contain the copy of NTBACKUP. it is possible, however, that HOME has it on the cd but won't install it. Microsoft did that with XP Home, but you won't find it, NETBEUI, and other extra items on 3rd party Restore cd's that are based on XP Home.


N & KN Editions


Tidbits

activation failure lockout of browser after 1 hour of use. other MS softwre to follow

Aero

not a good OS for multimedia, dangerous for medical imaging

google news
The Register

About Laptop hibernation

"By default,universal serial bus (USB) keyboard and a USB mouse use to wake a computer after the computer goes in hibernation. When a USB device is enabled to wake the computer, the default behavior permits the computer to enter the S1 system power state for standby. Standby is not the S3 system power state. The S1 system power state is a "lighter" system power state than S3. But S1 response slower than S3. We can change this settings in BIOS, going to power management and change Suspend mode settings from S1 to S3, restart the computer. That should work. Hopefully =)"
quoted from here

Laptop "partial sleep"-never-wake-up solution

  1. Click Start, type device in the Start Search box, and then click Device Manager in the Programs list. or, Start|Control Panel|System and Maintenance|Device Manager.
  2. In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
  3. In Device Manager, expand Mice and other pointing devices.Start --> Control Panel --> System and Maintenance --> Device Manager.
  4. Right-click the USB mouse, and then click Properties.
  5. Click the Power Management tab.
  6. Click to clear the Allow this device to wake the computer check box, and then click OK.
quoted from here

Support

See here

Devices not supported

HP Photosmart 1215 (use PhotoSmart 7200 driver, printer port to DOT4_001)
ATI Remote Wonder (no driver support yet)
HP 4300 Scanner
Any sound card

Software not supported

Adobe Acrobat 7 (use Foxit until then)
QuickBooks older than 2007.
Audacity

Windows Mail - send-receive button fails, but auto works

I hope I remember everything I did.
It was in my case because of the default connections.
Mine was set to a Bluetooth connection and I changed it to LAN for each Windows Mail user and also I set LAN as default in Internet Options.
Try it to setup your connections and let me know if it helped in your case as well.
Sorry that I don't know the exact details anymore because I switched to Outlook 2007 by now and don't remember the details but try it to setup your connections and you'll get there.
quoted from here

access to Administrator account

Since you created a user with administrator rights, the default administrator account will be hidden.
To login as administrator, log off and press Ctrl+Alt+Del in the welcome screen the You will get the classic logon window.
Type adminisitrator & password

migrate windows installation using Vista DVD

here

"bootmgr compressed"

"Don't ask... but I've managed to compress the partition of my HD with my Vista install on (by checking the little box on the HD properties in Vista). So now whenever I try and boot up I get an error message saying
'BOOTMGR Compressed, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart'" possible command-line Answer:
expand bootmgr temp
attrib bootmgr -s -r -h
del bootmgr
ren temp bootmgr
attrib bootmgr -a +s +r +h

install, reboot, works, reboot, noboot!

Allright this is what happens, i installed vista ultimate on the C partition, when it was done it worked perfectly, but when i reboot my pc it isn't able to start vista. i get a couple of lines before it tries to boot in DOS and then it just restarts my computer again...
Answer:
boot in safe mode then restart in normal mode.

backup utility bad news

crashes system
locks up

activation problems moving Vista from old to new pc

I installed it on an old PC while my other PC was not working. It got fixed. I moved the drive with Vista from the old PC into the fixed PC.

The problem is it was activated on the old PC. Now I need to know how to transfer the product key to the current PC.
Of course if activation does fail on the new machine you may want to contact Microsoft.
Just call the 800 number and tell them that you move the drive to another pc, when you make a severe change like a mother board you have to call and reactivate Windows.

In fact U reinstalled windows and it gave me a 3 day grace period, it will not activate until all the drivers are installed for the motherboard as it was during activation. I did install a tv card afterward with no problems, it goes mainly by the motherboard and the hdd if that is changed.
You have to do it by phone. But after you input the numbers, you will have to be redirected to a person. There you can explain what's happened. You'll then be given the activation code.
quoted from here

Vista runs out of resources before it runs out of memory?

[this was true for XP - I think this is still true for Vista as well]
Just like in the days of windows 95/98/ME, we have the same problem once again. microsoft thought they had fixed the problem. but somebody hard-coded some low numbers and limited folks with maximum memory in their systems.
Not only is there a per-user-process limit of 10,000 handles in XP that may also apply to Vista, something else is running out when I try to run many applications at once (and still have 1.4GB RAM+4GB pagefile) and not letting me run anything else.
but wait - there's also in winnt.h a #define MAXIMUM_WAIT_OBJECTS 64, which means that you can't allocate more than 64 handles for WAIT objects per process.

microsoft OS's limited to 32 processors

also in winnt.h I found #define MAXIMUM_PROCESSORS 32. This explains why microsoft OS's are not used in SMP systems. We are quickly coming up on octo-core systems. There was something special I learned about the number of processors that I can't tell you, but it may be invalid nowadays anyway since code has become more and more multithreaded.

vista on laptops? maybe not before, but try it now...

...but microsoft is forcing vista — and battery life is suffering. some laptops can get up to 3 hours battery life.
rescue: there is a beta program called the Vista Battery Saver. it's written in C# and includes source code (well, some of the resources are missing). it works by disabling some not-so-important services. Turning off Aero doesn't result in much savings: 1-4% under heavy use or something like that. The sidebar nobody has done research on yet.
eventually this utility will be folded into an automatic update and eventually into a service pack.
System Requirements: Home Premium and above.

MSDOS on x64?

according to a post, MSDOS apps can be run under x64 if you run VMWARE. Otherwise, don't expect to.

Video Cards

ATI: Radeon x1900 series, Radeon x1600 series, Radeon x1300 series, ATI Radeon X1550, Radeon HD 2900 XT, ATI Radeon HD 2600 series, ATI Radeon HD 2400 series (ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, ATI Radeon X1950 PRO, ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire, ATI Radeon X1900 GT, ATI Radeon X1650 XT, ATI Radeon X1650 PRO, ATI Radeon X1600 XT, ATI Radeon X1600 PRO, ATI Radeon X1550, ATI Radeon X1300 PRO, ATI Radeon X1300, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO, ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT).

nVidia: Geforce 8 series, (8400 GS, 8500 GT, 8600 GT, 8600 GTS, and 8800 GT, 8800 GTS, 8800 GTX, 8800 Ultra). 7600 GS.

vista window/resource problem

Photoshop users are having problems with Vista due to a bug or limitation in Vista. also, you can't open more than 20 tabs of IE. see MSDN article: 'cannot open a new window under vista!'.

printer drivers

printer driver filenames are sometimes named with AOM (add-on-modules).

optimization

see microsoft article.

Services

descriptions and what happens if you stop them

Vista TechCenter

see here.

XP downgrade

see forum posts at microsoft.

Service Pack 1 (SP1)

available as an 1.1GB ISO file or all language ISO file at microsoft, and also from windows update as a smaller download.
SP1 whitepaper
adds new filesystem: exFAT (FAT64). Intended for flash devices.
Incompatible with Microsoft's point-of-sale software & Microsoft Dynamics RMS.
One user said SP1 "really screwed up the works" (the machine also had lots of spyware and free software and junk). another machine had minor fixable problems after SP1 with a more carefully maintained system.
"If you have a good working system then don't install SP1."
If you are rebuilding a system from scratch, it's probably a good idea to install it then so Microsoft doesn't ping you for updates every day. They will always term it a "Critical Update."

SP2

see article.

  • Let you record data onto Blu-ray discs
  • Add Vista Feature Pack For Wireless, provides support for latest Bluetooth v2.1 -- as well as for the Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi protocol
  • better Wi-Fi performance when you're exiting Vista's sleep mode
  • Make RSS feeds sidebar gadget work faster and better
  • latest desktop search engine, Windows Search 4
  • Cut down the resources it takes to run your various sidebar gadgets
  • overall tune-up
  • Vista Service Pack 2 will also deliver some under-the-hood improvements
  • support for VIA Technologies' new 64-bit CPU
  • support exFAT, which can handle larger files and handle larger flash drives and can also use UTC timestamps so you can synchronize files across different time zones
  • Boost power management efficiency by up to 10%

you must install SP1 first.

Vista/Server2008 SP2 EXEs

Vista/Server2008 SP2 DVD ISOs

Constant Hard disk chattering

see article
They are all required for decent service, but on laptops (to save power) you can do without a few of these. extraneous Services are:
  • SuperFetch (displayed as svchost.exe(LocalSystemNetworkRestricted)) (you could try doing without this on a laptop, but I think you would be making a big mistake)
  • System Protection (displayed as System) accessing C:\System Volume Information (If you can think you can do without the safety net of System Restore Points, go ahead and zap)
  • Defrag (displayed as DfrgNtfs.exe) (laptops can do without this, but you will have to do your own defrag sometime!)
  • Indexing [Desktop Search] (displayed as SearchIndexer.exe) (laptops can do without this)
  • [laptop: services to do with Aero]

To disable these services, Stop the service, and then set the service startup type to Manual instead of Automatic.

Location of Application Data

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\
you can also get it from a CMD prompt by using %APPDATA%

Location of Desktop

C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\
In one case, a person ended up with 2 of these, one of which was blank but contained the actual desktop. the other contained all the shortcuts he made, which were now invalid.

End-Of-Life (EOL) Schedule

Up-to-date EOL Schedule

Service Pack Roadmap

Service Pack roadmap

TweakUI/PowerToys for Windows XP

these tools have not been ported to Vista. However, someone suggested a 3rd party Tweak Vi I am told ($37.40,$49.99) - I have never used it and know nothing about it.
No telling if they will ever be. here is a 3rd-party TweakUAC. It lets you disable and enable UAC. You should have an AV package though, and UAC can be your ally.

Vista Resource Kit

Another possible replacement for tweakUI is to get the Windows Vista Resource Kit $59.99. Those books are traditionally very thick and come with a CD (it's a DVD now).

Bitlocker disk encryption

"BitLocker supports options that will not allow a machine to boot or resume from hibernate until the user can:
Enter a PIN
Insert a USB stick that contains a secret Key
and as of Windows Vista SP1 both enter a PIN and insert the USB stick!"
article source: msdn

Superfetch a memory hog

see here and here for articles.

"> If you have 4G Vista consumes an extra 1G of overhead, if you have 10G
> it uses up 7G. It carefully makes sure you never come out ahead.

> Hello - I have 8 gigs of ram, and windows has decided to use all of it. So much so that I can't even save a 400x300 jpg out of photoshop that has 4 layers and no effects.
> I could see letting Vista pre-cache with a couple gigs, but it caches up 6GB! This is ridiculous. Everything runs super slow. Launching Firefox takes forever. And everything keeps saying "not enough memory to run" etc. I don't know what is wrong with the service... maybe something got corrupted. But it would be kind of nice if you could have a setting of max RAM to use in your pre-cache. Or tell it programs to not precache.

When i try to update AVG Free 8.0.169 from a dir (Tools-> Update from directory...), i get the message "Update Failed. General Error - not enough free memory, write error". I have tried every thing from increasing virtual memory manually to setting virtual memory to be system managed - no effect. i still get the same message. i don't think memory management is so hot on Vista. The feature of AVG works fine on my 1.5 GB RAM Laptop whereas my desktop (which has the problem) running VIsta Professional SP1 has 2 GB RAM and is a Core 2 Duo processor to boot.
Any suggestions????"

Bal Raj @ New Delhi on September 29, 2008 08:02 AM

"Vista 64 Ultimate SP1.. Dual Core 3.2.. 8GB of ram. Vista is a memory crack addict.. most times I have under a gig of memory free. 7 gigs..into a black hole."

"I've had my paging file on and off.. mostly running IM programs, email..movies.. not a big load. Sidebar takes a gig alone, Windows search takes a gig.....clearly there is a massive issue with memory allocation within this 64 bit OS. Even after closing the sidebar and search (which should free up 2gb) it free's up about 400mb instead.

Under a fresh install the system ran great with 8GB, it was normally using 2-3gb.. now im sure if I gave it 50GB and ran Outlook it would be 99% used"

Wodz on September 3, 2008 04:10 PM

"IE and games keep crashing." (probably from lack of memory?). not everybody is reporting this, so could be their HW. I saw someone with a laptop running vista and he had no problems using IE.

I seem to recall that you can turn off that feature.

I *think* it is Superfetch. It is a service you can disable. Jim Michaels.

games/directX apps out of memory

see this article for a microsoft patch

it has to do with the fact that before patch, apps would fight with windows for the 2GiB memory space. post-patch, windows will only use the memory when it's given the go.

Pros & cons of vista

see here

Vista Recovery DVD ISO

If you bought a brand-name PC (Dell, Acer, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and such like), you probably didn't get a System Restore disc (Vista Disc) - you got a System Restore Partition on your hard disk (is you ever have to change hard disks in 5 years or need to uipgrade disks due to size constraints you may need to pick up some real DVDs). You should look here and get an ISO for free to burn. You can usually buy System Restore DVD's from the OEM (HP, etc) for about $20 from the parts department. Be sure to ask. The HP discs cannot do a repair - they can only format and install from scratch, but they do install all of your drivers and they are handy to have around. your computer repairman will be grateful.

turning on hibernation

powercfg /h on

UAC, Filesystem Virtualization, and why your apps may not be running under your user account

Non-certified Vista/7 apps like FileZilla (and other older apps) don't have a manifest. A manifest is in every Vista/7 app and states its permission needs.
Check out this article on why your app may not be running under the user account you logged in as. Apparently C:\Program Files is virtualized.

vista speedup tips

5 quick tips (but I don't recommend the encrypt part if something goes wrong and you ever need to get your files back)

Optimize Windows Vista for better performance

tweakvista