Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hey everyone. I know I haven’t written that much lately and that is because I haven’t been doing anything worth mentioning on this blog. Of course that doesn’t mean things haven’t been going on, just means that they haven’t really caught my attention. The last time you saw me I was running Windows Seven™ and I’m quite happy to announce that I haven’t had any major issues with the beta the release. Any way I’m taking a few days off and I just wanted to thank everybody that was part of this whole project and to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very very Happy New Year. I’m very sure that next year there will be even more interesting and unpredictable stuff to write about and be sure up I’m up to the task. So once again thanks a lot, take it easy and I will see you all next year. Cheers, Geeky.

Changing file permissions in Vista

Ocasionally in Vista you may come across certain system files, or restricted files that for some unknown reason you would want to change. For example let's say you would want to delete a system file ..for example windows.sys ( no that file doesn't exist). Still it's a system file and if you tried to change it, or modify it in any way the OS would deny you acces. Now here's how you can change that. The trick is to become the owner of the file and then give yourself godlike privileges.

Here are the steps :

1) Find the file you want to change.
2) Right click on it, go to properties.
3) Go to the SECURITY tab.
4) Select the user you wish to change the permissions for. In this case it's your own user name.
5) Hit the advanced button in the right bottom corner.
6) Go to the OWNER tab.
7) Hit Edit.
8) Select your user name from the list and the hit ok.
9) Hit ok till you close all the menus.
10) Once again right click on the file, go to properties -> Security.
11)Select your own user name.
12) Hit edit.
13) Give yourself full control over the file.

That's it your done. Now I know there are many such tutorials out there ( some even with pretty pictures) but I posted this for ease of access. Hope it helped someone, Cheers.

Windows Se7en

After a full week of doing almost nothing ( just a Vista reinstall after buying a brand new Seagate 640gb HDD) today was a nice day. Why? No not because I went out with friends and had fun ..but because I finally got my hands on a Windows 7 Beta. Yes yes ..Microsoft Windows 7 Beta ..it's out ..and I have it. ( actually it's been out for quite a while now ..I even wrote about it ).

So quick facts: I'm running build 6.1.6956 ( The final release will be 6.5 and not 7 just to improve compatibility with drivers and apps) It looks even better than Vista. It boots and shuts down in the same amount of time. It uses exactly the same resource amount as Vista SP1. I've had no issues with drivers until now. In case your installer says it's not made for this version of windows just use the "run in compatibility with.." option. Surprisingly it works wonders.

The only issues that I've had so far is that upon installation it messed up the MBR ( master boot record) so I had to use the Repair option on the dvd. But besides that it seems to work great. Stable and fast. And remember this is still Beta, we should see even bigger improvements with the RC releases.
For reference I'm running : Windows 7 Beta on :
Asus p5kc
Intel Quad Core Q6600
Maxtor 160gb SATA
2 GB RAM ~800
Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS 512

By the way I forgot to mention, one pleasant surprise: you can now choose the level of security you want from the UAC ( User Account Control) so it;s not that bothersome anymore.

And here are a few screens. For any questions feel free to comment.

Windows Vista/ Server 2008 Service Pack 2

Yesterday Mike Nash from MS announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is being released to a wider audience. So subscribers of MSDN and TechNet, that want a preview can now download the beta build. Of course, for most users it is recommended that they wait until the official release.

Vista Service Pack 2 contains all the hotfixes and security updates released ever since SP1 came out. Plus it adds hardware compatibilities, but other than that very little is trully interesting in this pack. As I said before, Microsoft is now fully commited to Windows 7 and Vista does not desperately need any major improvements ( such as was the case 1 year ago) so quite little energy is spent on this project.

The requirements for installing SP2 are having Vista with Sp1 installed ( Server 2008 shipped with sp1 preinstalled). And an update to the servicing stack that as was with SP1 , will be shipped through Windows Update.

Cheers

My Weekend

I actually had a dream earlier today .. that they were introducing the new i7 Intels onto the iPhone...wouldn't that be so extra sweet? :)) Anyway here's my weekend. On saturday after visiting a cousin for his birthday I was asked to fix 2 PCs. Both of them AMD's one has an AM2 socket proccessor I don't really know what it is and the other has a 754 socket Sempron. Both of them were supposedly working at some point.

So I take on the AM2 one. Plug it in try to power it up ..nothing happens. Opened it, took at look at the cables and power source, everything seemed to be ok, turn it back on again still nothing. And by nothing I mean the state in which the computer powers up but doesn't even load it's BIOS or anything. So I start taking it apart, trying to change each part at a time to find out what the problem was. At one point when I reassembled it on the floor ( basically had the power source connected to the motherboard which was placed on a cardboard thing, and then I stuck some RAM into it ) it actually booted. And though the HDD wasn't connected the computer itself was working fine, I was able to look around the BIOS but there was nothing weird there. When I tried to restart it, it went back to it's original "stupidly do nothing" stage. And I haven't been able to figure it out. The thing is I don't have another AM2 socketed proccessor, nor AM2 socketed motherboard, cause then I could have changed between them.

Next I tried the other PC, the Sempron 3100+ ( i think). This one would boot up no problem, even boot windows, but after a few minutes of usage it would restart itself and keep restarting until you took the power cable out. First thing I thought was that the CPU was overheating. But after a few tries and tests that was no the problem. Next I thought that it might be the power source, because a weird buzzing sound came from it. So I changed it. Still nothing. I said what the hell ..let's try the RAM. This is the point when things got screwed. I took out the RAM card, and replaced it with another one (it's DDR1~400). The computer wouldn't do anything, got into the exact state that the other PC was in. Meaning powering up but doing nothing else. I changed back to the original RAM card but still nothing happened. So now I have 2 PCs with the same symptoms, different builds and no ideea on what is really wrong.

I would appreciate any suggestions you might have. Cheers, Geeky