Superfetch

 Vista introduced this new feature called Superfetch ( and it's still present in Seven). This thing is actually what deals with your memory consumption. Superfetch detects whatever program is running and allocates the necessary amount of memory for the program to run in real time. Another little thing that Superfetch does is that while you still have free memory it detects the programs you use most often and caches them. What this means is that if by any chance you start one of those programs it will launch right away ( many times faster than XP depending on size and program) because it was preloaded into your memory. And this is another reason why most often, if you check your mem status ..you'll notice that usually it's only 1-2% free. That is because the rest is cached ( right now i have 1.4 gb of cache and only 15mb free). And luckily this works really well and in case you start a program that demands additional memory Superfetch instantly releases the extra amount. 

 now here's the fun part .. 2 minutes earlier Superfetch failed and crashed, windows gave me a warning. I was expecting at least a restart if not a direct system crash ..but nothing happened besides Aero being disabled :)) and Aero just came back now as it has done many times before. ( yeah occasionally it crashes and restarts after about 1 minute ..it's because of my drivers).

That's it. I'm really sorry, i know i haven't written anything good but i'm super busy and always tired when i come home, so i never really have the mood to start messing up my pc. Anyway I have a holiday next week and I promise i'll try to get up to speed. Cheers

Bsods ( disabling auto restart)

A quick follow-up to the last post. I kept getting many blue screens and the computer kept restarting. Now you actually need the info in those bsods to get to the root of the problem, and usually you never have enough time before the restart. 

So here's how to disable the auto-restart:

Go to system properties. You can do that either through Control Panel or by right-clicking the my computer icon and going to properties.  Select the Advanced tab. There select Settings from Startup and Recovery and clear the Automatically restart feature. That's it. Now whenever you get a blue screen your computer will wait for a manual restart and you can get all the info you want.

Assassin's Creed Issues

 Well let me tell you about this little thing. Yesterday, after quite a long long long long day ( of doing nothing) I decided to catch up on my gaming. Yes I can consider myself a gamer, I have a passion for games, but I haven't really played anything the last few months for different reasons. So I decided to replay Assassin's Creed, cause I never had the chance to test it on the new GPU.

By the way if you don't know I'm running Vista SP 1 and a GeForce 8800GTS 512. So I set everything except the multisampling to the highest rating possible and start playing. After about an hour, I decide to try the multisampling. So I set that on high and get back into the game. Guess what, the pc crashes, BSODs, and restarts. A little puzzled I restart the game, set the multisampling lvl back to default and continue playing. After another 2 minutes the same thing happens. The bsods giving different graphics driver files as being the cause of the crash. Now I'm even more confused.

A note: I personally built my PC from pieces, and I used an old frame which is somewhat too small to properly fit the GPU card. So that's why I always have one side out, and that's also partially the reason why my card is always very hot. And this led me to believe that maybe it was overheating. The normal temperature while the card is idle should be somewhere close to 50-55 degrees C. Mine idles at 73, and goes up to 82 on load, which actually isn't THAT bad. So it wasn't overheating.

As a final check I looked round the net for other people with the same issues. And sure enough I found a whole lot. No nobody has any fix, and the problem seems to come up randomly, even if the game was working perfect before.

The FIx: the fix for me was switching back from DX10 to DX9. I mean only use the DX9 exec. And I haven't had any problems with it since. Though it is strange..

See you guys 

Windows 7 Beta

        SO the holiday is over, and the shit all began once again. here's two things worth mentioning. Last night i watched the Macworld Keynote. Man it was simply sad...i'm serious ..simply SAD. mindless robots applauding simplicity taken to the extent that it actually dumbens ( to make someone dumb) the user. What I did decide to do after watching ..is ..no not go out and buy iLife 09 , rather go to the Apple Store, and bet 1000 bucks that no one there can actually convince me to get a Mac. 

Second thing, today Microsoft officially released the Seven Beta. Now you may remember I said i was already running it, but that was build 3000 ( close to that number don't remember exactly), and this is build 7000. Probably a few improvements on the way, but as i have been saying for these last 3 weeks I have had absolutely no issues even with build 3000. You can download the Beta from the MS site. And for further info you can also take a look at Windows Team Blog.

But currently it's so busy that you can't actually see the site. Oh and by the way there were rumors about the official Seven release date being January 2010. Once again ..I honestly don't get Microsoft's timetable.

  

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.