Vista Themes 2.0

I consider myself to be an inteligent normal human being...but sometimes I act totally against that. You might remember my other post with bad experiences with Vista themes. And you mihgt also think that I wouldn't be so eager as to try it again.. FALSE.

20 minutes ago I came across what seemed to be a cool Warcraft theme. The only problem is that it was specifically designed for XP. But I don't take into account such "details" :P. So I downloaded the theme, which was not a theme file but an exe. I said ok .. here we go again, and ran the exe. It installed some obscure h4x0r program that once again patched the theme files but also changed some .ico files from the system. Vista of course reverted to basic and then ..even worse ..took the "Classic" skin making it look like win 95.

This was still ok ..the major problem came ..when after patching and changing files ..somehow .. that program messed with my internet connection ( PPOE). So now I have no net .. I manualy revert vista to my own theme and restart the computer. Of course the .ico files were still there ..and the network still wouldn't work. This time ..System Restore did the trick. I simply restored to a few days ago and everything got back to normal.

Conclusion: Stop messing with themes! :)) Cheers.

How to change an admin password in XP/Vista

Let's say your flatmate changed the password on the admin account. Let's say you're not trying to hack into his personal files to see naked pictures of his girlfriend ..rather you're trying to install a vital piece of software that you need to test so as not to get fired. What can you do?

First option
In case you have another administrator account ..well ..use that ( duuuuh).

Second option
You might be able to get into safe mode. It may be protected or it may not be. If you do get into safe mode you'll be able to create another account with administrative rights and then log on to that one. To get into safe mode just press F8 while booting and select Safe Mode.

Third option
If you somehow have access to system files. WinXp ,actually windows NT, stores passwords in crypted files : SAM. There are plenty of .sam editing tools out there but I wouldn't know which one to recommend. You can also try deleting the SAM and SAM.log files located in windows/system32/config/. The problem with tempering with these files is that even a tiny mistake may make your windows unsable and you'll need a clean reinstall.

Fourth option
This actually is the safest one. You can use one of the many freeware programs out there that are specifically designed for this. For a list of such programs and a few other tips and ideeas you can take a look at Petri's site. I actually used Petter Nordahl-Hagen's Offline NT Password & Registry Editor downloaded from there and it worked wonders.
Hope this helped someone, cheers.

Happy Birthday

So yesterday RGS had it's first birthday. It's been one year since that dark and spooky afternoon when I decided that no more would I let all the work and nerves put into making a damn pc work , go to waste. It's been an exciting year, with a few very new and interesting tehnological developements, with increasing pageviews but much fewer problems than I would have anticipated.
First I would like to thank everybody for the feedback and suggestions, and everyone who has in one way or another helped me ( including the anonymous H4x0r 1337 people on different forums :P ). I promise I'll try and do an even better job this second year.
So thanks once again and Happy Birthday to that cute blue photoshoped excuse for a mascot that you can see on the right corner of the banner. :)) Cheers, Geeky

Internet speed, bandwidth issues in Vista

So I wrote an article some time ago in which I mentioned I had had some issues with the internet bandwidth in Vista. And this only happens to me when I do clean reinstalls, it has happened a few times now and the fix is really easy. But yesterday other people complained they had simlar problems after random upgrades to Vista.
Symptoms: - very low download speed
- problems with loading search widgets and other such things.
- issues with searching on programs such as DC++ or other p2p apps.
- probably others but they're specific to each system.

How to solve: simply update your network card driver. Go to the manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers available. If by any chance you have the latest drivers simply reinstall them. You can also do this via Device Manager.
Now just in case that didn't work ( thought this has never happened) or you still think you can get more juice out of your connection here are two other tutorials that will help you: First, the auto tuning for TCP/IP receive levels. And second, how to Change or Disable the QoS Reserved Bandwidth Limit in Vista. This one reffers to the default bandwidth that the OS has priority over for such programs as Auto Update.
Cheers.

Microsoft Store

Microsoft has launched today a new online feature: the MS Store. Sounds familar? Well it should cause apple has had one for many years now. You can pick up any MS manufactured product, including but not limited to games, software and even hardware with only one type of your credit card number.And it's not only a US store, it's also for the UK, Deutchland ( Germany) and Korea. Other countries will be added along the way. If you want to check the store out you can at www.microsoftstore.com .
Cheers!

A Warcraft Retrospective

This isn't really related to anything, but it's my blog so I can post anything. Warcraft, in my opinion is THE game of the last 14 years. It was the game of my chilhood, and now ..14 years later ..i still enjoy an ocasional skirmish. SO for all the fans out there have a look at A Warcraft Restrospective:
Part 1

Part2

And part 3

Intel i7 processors

I really really don't have time to write a proper article on this, but other people did. So here's a look at the new i7 series from Intel. Basically ..it's better than anything you've ever come to know until now. So for a full article THIS IS THE LINK. and I just added the benchmark jpeg to give you an ideea beforehand.

Android uber bug

I didn't cover the release of the whole Android G1 stuff here because I really didn't care about it. But this tops everything else so I wanted to say a few words. It seems that the biggest and unexpected bug turned up a few days ago.
Apparently, every firmware version RC29 and lower interpret every single word that you type, anywhere (!) as a system command. And not only does it run it ..but it runs it with superuser permissions (WOW). The test is already classic. Go anywhere and type "reboot" then hit return. Your phone will reboot.
Luckily for those of you using it, Google has already rolled out RC30 fix that makes all your problems disappear and your life complete!

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

I read about it, but forgot to mention it here. Last week ( October 29th)Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 2 BETA to a very few lucky testers. The whole official release is still a few months away , but I'd say that most likely Q1 of 2009 will bring the service pack to everyone.

In addition to previously released updates since the launch of Windows Vista SP1, Windows Vista SP2 contains changes focused on supporting new types of hardware and adding support for several emerging standards:

• Windows Vista SP2 adds Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches.


• Windows Vista SP2 contains the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology.


• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista.


• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration.


• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

And of course, in adition to this there will be a number of bug and compatibility fixes. Will be waiting for it, thought I really doubt it will have the impact that SP1 had, especially because the OS doesn't desperately need it ( as was the case with the first service pack)

Cheers, Geeky

Y Mess for Vista CANCELLED

This is actually news from 2 weeks ago but I thought of posting it just in case you haven't found out yet: Yahoo cancelled the developement of the Vista version of Messenger. After 1 year and a half they finally caved and no further work will be put in this project.
For those of you that have the Vista edition installed, don't worry it will still work but no new features are going to be added, and there's no online support for it. For the rest of you don't worry, Mess 9.0 works very well and we even got the old smileys back.
And for those of you who completely missed the whole Mess for Vista thing you can check out this post.
CHeers!

Asus TV 7135 Tuner Card

I had another PC a couple of years ago, runnning Win XP. The PC came with a tv tuner card. Now i'm not the type to watch tv ..basically everything i watch is on my pc and usually not related to this country. So I didn't use at all because of that, and also because for some unexplained reason the sound didn't work. When I gave that machine away I took out the tuner card and yesterday i came across it. Having nothing better to do and no life of my own I decided to try it out and see if i could get it working.

I hooked it up to the motherboard and turned on the PC. I was a little worried about drivers cause the original driver cd would only install on : " windows 95, 98, 98se, 2000 or later". Don't actually get how that's possible but anyway I really thought that it wouldn't run on my Windows 1.1 ( Vista Ultimate SP1 ). After loading Vista had a little surprise for me. It actually auto installed the driver from microsoft's server. So I said great ..let's try it out. Launched Win Media Center and tried to watch tv. OPS sorry no tv tuner card found. You need one! BUY ONE! FROM WINDOWS MARKETPLACE NOOOW! I thought to myself ..well the pc doesn't recognise the card..too bad. And i took a look in Device Manager under Sound, Video and Game controllers but the card DID show up there. Tried to update but it said the drivers were the latest there was. After 10 minutes of looking around i realised that Vista had only installed the driver for the FM receiver on the card, not for the video part. So after another 20 minutes of looking around the Asus website i came across the corect driver and installed it. Then I started Media Center one more time.. WOW SORRY NO TUNER CARD FOUND BUY ONE YOU CHEAP BASTARD. I was sick with media center so i got the latest version ( trial) of Power Cinema and the card works perfectly with it.

PS: Opera has reached version 9.62 but it sucks more and more. I have problems with it rendering many pages ( including this "new post" page) and there's no support for silverlight and other such add-ons.

iPhone Apps

Sorry I haven't written in such a long time but I haven't actually done anything lately. Got an older Gigabyte motherboard, with an AM 2 socket and an AMD proccesor , but for some reason it doesn't work and i have yet to figure it out. Basically it only worked once.

Anyway in the last few days two apps for the iPhone came up that are really nice.

The first one is Google Earth. It was launched a week ago, and is available for free on both iPhone and iTouch from the Apple App Store. It's exactly the same as the computer version, but it also uses the built in accelerometer for a few special things that you should check out.

The second one is Cooliris ( PicLens). You know I'm a great fan. The cooliris project was first an add-on for Firefox and IE, but now it comes as a stand-alone app. It's design fits perfectly with the whole Apple-ish feel. For more info on Cooliris you can either check out their homepage or this post Again this is a free app, you can get it at the App Store.

I'll do a post on Windows 7 as soon as I get the time