From Vista to Seven

Hello. How are you guys? What have YOU been up to? How are YOUR pcs doing?

Just wanted to do a very very short summary on a few up-front differences between the two Microsoft operating systems. Besides all the changes listed out there, here are just a few that you come across in the very first days of using Seven.

1) Boot Time.
When Seven was first unveiled, one of the main features was 40% faster than Vista at boot. Well that's a myth! Don't get me wrong, it does boot up very fast just not faster than Vista. Either I was very lucky with Vista or whatever but both OSs take 15-20 seconds from power up to desktop. And I tested this quite a few times just to be sure.

2) The real difference in boot is another one. Seven uses parallel driver loading, meaning it loads all your drivers at the same time making use of multi core cpus. Also means that once you see your desktop ..that's it, all drivers were loaded. Vista did not do this, and though it didn't take very long to see your desktop, drivers were still loading. For example after desktop it took another 1 minute to get my printer driver ready. But while doing this ..Vista also caches some of your frequently used programs, meaning if by any chance you use one of those programs it would load up much faster than usual. Seven doesn't seem to do this anymore.

3) Copy-ing + Install time
Copy-ing files finally seems to have gotten fix. It works even better/faster than in SP1 and I'm glad it does. As a direct result, install times for different applications are considerably lower.

4) Security.
Seven is based on Server 2008 kernel + Vista features and security. It's even more secure than Vista, and best of all you can now set the level of agressiveness for the User Account Control.

5) Compatibility
I have not had any problems with Seven ( except for this one). Most programs work, all drivers worked and in case they don't try the Run in Compatibility mode feature because it actually works. And best of all, companies have already released drivers for RC1 for example nVidia updated my graphics driver.
6) Toolbar
This is one of the highlights of Seven but I must say my own feelings are quite mixed. At first it does seem great and it always looks great but as for improving efficiency ..well not so sure about that. I mean it does make things faster but only in specific situations ( mainly the ones demoed by microsoft with multiple similar-looking documents), but there are quite a few situations in which it actually hinders the user. And there is still some work to be put into it because ocasionally it will get stuck and not open windows anymore. You have to manually right click and maximize the window for things to get back to normal. But certain aspects can be tweeked for example when to combine the icons and their size. Overall Seven makes for a nice experience and I really look forward to the finished product.
The end.
As I said this is not completely of thorough in any way. I just wanted to note the first differences people will come across between the two operating systems. Please leave comments and suggestions. :-) Cheers

No title

Well I just wanted to let you know that (as you can see) we have a new header thanks to Flo. Don't ask me why there's a white line next to it ..it's just the way blogspot resizes pictures and I'm too lazy to edit the html again.

Second I wanted to give credit to Lucian, he's the one that told me how to modify the volume limit on ipods.

I might write an article later on today. Cheers

Windows 7 / How to install Alcohol

Most people would say that I have way too much free time, but that is simply not true. Today, instead of writing homework or studying for exams I decided to install Win 7 RC1. I would have installed the first public beta but because the licenses expire in a few months I decided not to, but this license expires in March next year so I'm fine till then.

Now besides all the new and wonderful features Seven also brings a lot of crap with it. Yes I am very aware that this is not the final product, that it's still beta and all of that so stop yelling. I am also very aware that I personally tested the pre-beta version with which I HAD NONE OF THESE PROBLEMS.

One of the very annoying problems I encountered was trying to install a program with which I could MOUNT VIRTUAL DISKS. I have an Alcohol 120% kit, that I used on Vista and the pre-beta release of seven without any problems. Well that failed. When trying to install you would be prompted to restart. Now there are two things that go wrong here:
1) You reboot but the installation starts all over again, looping like this forever.
2) Windows crashes on boot and won't boot again unless you restart and use the Check Startup Tool provided there.
Mine was the second case. So I finally got windows to boot again and decided to try Daemon instead of Alcohol. I picked it up and installed it. Guess what? It would boot and go into an infinite loop the program always starting the setup instead of continuing on the install.

I looked around the web and found a solution that seemed somewhat logical. Before booting hit F8 and select one of the last options, the one that stops windows from enforcing DRIVER SIGNATURES. If that doesn't ( and it didn't) work for the daemon install it may work for other things, such as Windows not recognizing certain drivers and hardware.

( oh and if by any chance you have an Asus motherboard like I do the challenge is even better. On asus motherboards pressing F8 will get you the Boot Priority menu. So pressing too soon would get you that menu. Pressing too late would do nothing because Windows had already started to load. You have to have precise timing for anything to work)

Anyway when that didn't work I went directly to Daemon's forum and started looking around. No solution was found because the people at Daemon are crying because Seven is only a beta and they do not have support for betas and we should stop asking for it because it's a betaaa :(((( . God damn lazy bastards, the RTM release will probably be this summer and if all goes well Seven will be released before the end of the year so SCREW YOU. ( yes i'm pissed).

With that out of the way I checked back with the people at Alcohol. Well they seemed to be better at this, because they're latest release is Seven-prof. Meaning there are no compatibility issues. Or so they claimed ..when I installed it, it got me back in the loop of restarts with nothing really installing.

The last thing I did that actually worked is a combination of three things:
1) Completely disable the User Account Control.
2) Right click the setup.exe file ..and get it to run in compatibility mode with WIN XP.
3) Right click on the file and select RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR.
4) Finally upon restarting press F8 and select the setting I was talking about above.
I don't honestly know what made this work because none of the above steps worked on it's own. After doing all of that the setup should have worked and you should have Alcohol installed. You can get your User Acount Control back to it's setting and everything should work just fine.

Modifying iPod Volume Limit

Disclaimer: What I do is on my own risk and expense. Please don't take what you read here as foolproof, because it's far from it. Messing around with software and hardware may have undesirable side-effects such as unwanted children, anorexia, rigor mortis, earthquakes, etc.

LE: This procedure only works for jailbroken iPods.
Ipods destined for the EU have a preset for volume limiting. You can't access it and it's designed to protect your ears/brain/family. But for those of us who don't care about any of those things here's how to disable the limiter.

First you'll need Total Commander. Then you'll need a plugin called T-poT. Then you'll need to install the plugin. To do this, extract the plugin into the Total Commander folder. Then go into TC->-configuration-options-plugins-file system .wfx and you add the plugin there.

Now connect your ipod. Using total commander go to network places and there you should see the files on your ipod. ( By the way ..before doing this you could go to folder options in control panel and select to view hidden and system files and folders).
Now follow this path: tpot/system/library/privateframeworks/celestialframework/RegioanalVolumeLimits.plist
RegioanalVolumeLimits.plist is the only file you need to modify. You copy it onto your hard drive, open it with notepad and replace the value : 0.aaaa ( where aaa is whatever ) and replace it with 1. Then copy it back to the ipod, overwriting the original. Disconnect the iPod and restart it.
That's it ..and it should be about 20% louder. Cheers

KemUtil.dll error

Occasionally drivers and programs start to act weird. As someone once said .. " My software doesn't have bugs, it just develops random features". It was this thing that happened this morning to a friend.

When he started his PC, Vista based ..there was an error with the KemUtil.dll . This driver actually belongs to Logitech, and comes with many of their harware ..for example a mouse, keyboard ( as was the case), graphic tablet etc. To get rid of the error you may try one of the following:
1) simply unplug and then plug back in the piece of hardware that you have from Logitech.
2) Reinstall the driver
3) If it's something plug and play you can uninstall the driver altogether and see if that works.

Security for Vista sp1 / Win 7

In case you don't have either of those operating systems and you're in no way planning to use them then you don't need to read this.
But if you do ..well here's the story.
Along with the first service pack for Vista Microsoft also launched a new set of APIs for developers to use. One of these APIs is used for communication between your Antivirus/Antispyware software and the operating system. Most software developers had implemented and used the older version of the API, but with the release of the new set and service pack 1 they would have to change to the new ones.

Now ..Microsoft gave developers an original 18 month grace period in which both the old and the new APIs would work, but that period ends. ( btw grace period started when you installed SP1 on your machine) Well in september the grace period will ends and yu may start receiving warnings about it.

What it all actually means?
Don't worry your antivirus software will still work, the only difference is that Windows won't know that. Windows will just tell you that " is on but is reporting its status to Windows Security Center in a format that is no longer supported. Use the program's automatic updating feature, or contact the program manufacturer for an updated version". ( screenshot below)

What can you do?
1) nothing because it;s all the same
2) Update your antivirus software as most companies have already implemented the new set of APIs and everything will get back to normal.

Changes from Beta to RC ..Windows 7

Due to intake of massive amounts of alcohol in the weekend + exams in the weekdays I found myself unable to write anything. But today I finally got some spare time and tried to catch up with what's been going on.

I came across some pages detailing changes that have occurred between the beta release ..and the RC release of Windows 7. The pages are as old as March but I only found them today. There;s no use in rewriting or even copy pasting them here, so I'll just give you the links: link 1 and of course link 2.

As you know the RC was released a few days ago and you can download it for free from Microsoft. The beta version expires on 1st of July 2009 , and the RC expires on March 1st 2010 so the final release will most likely be Q2 of 2010..or at least I hope ..I don't believe MS will do a RC2 thing because they got it quite right the first time.