My Insights

About a month ago, I downgraded to XP from Vista. This is after using Vista on a daily basis for close to a year.

WHY? Most avid windows users know that windows installations tend to get bloated. In my personal experience, I’ve had to redo my Windows installation every 1-2 years on a regular basis. So after about a year of Vista, things had gotten bloated - REALLY bloated. It got to the point where I couldn’t watch YouTube videos on my computer.

This is not something that I blame Microsoft for. I think Vista is definitely more advanced than XP and I even miss some features of Vista (such as integrated search in the start-menu) after I downgraded.

I DO however blame the lack of support from third-parties. Sony was slow to roll-out the HotKey utility software for my computer. This meant that I couldn’t turn down the volume on my laptop or change the screen brightness by pressing a button like I could on XP. The lack of Video driver support for my integrated ATI video card was also a big factor.

In part I also blame myself for being a little ambitious and installing Vista on a Pentium 4 machine with a little less than 1GB of RAM. I also had a hardware issue where my processor would downgrade from 3 GHz to 1.6 GHz when the computer got a little hot. This hardware issue was alleviated to some extent by cleaning the ventilation fans.

In any case, I am back on XP and loving the little utilities that I had lived without over the past year. I would love to go back to Vista once I have a strong enough machine. I recommend that if you are buying a laptop, buy one that is designed for Vista so as to minimize compatibility issues with respect to various utilities and drivers.

Ok. Its not that bad but the title sounded pretty dramatic so it stays. I love Vista but one thing it broke was my volume buttons on my precious Sony Vaio and the sony utilities are just NOT there!

So if you’re stuck in a similar predicament with an IBM, Sony or some other manufacturer that refuses to live in the year 2007, then follow these steps-

1) Download and Install AutoHotKey

2) Edit the script and use the following Code-

#.::
Send, {VKFFSC120}
return

#/::
Send, {VKFFSC130}
return

#,::
Send, {VKFFSC12E}
return

3) Press Win+. to mute, Win+/ to vol-up and Win+, to vol-down

You can of course change the script to your liking or if you need help then post a comment

I recently installed some updates that Vista had downloaded from Windows Update. After the updates were installed, I was asked to reboot my computer as expected. However, after the reboot when I signed in, I got a strange error/warning message that said “Reboot Required. A change occurred to your Windows license. You must restart your computer or Windows will stop working.”

I also remember Vista setting up personal settings upon login as is customary for new profiles when users first login. I thought this was pretty strange since my profile already existed on the computer. However even though it appeared that Vista was creating me a new profile, all my settings and files were untouched.

Anyways, I reboot the computer just like the warning/error message told me to and now things seem fine. Very Wierd.

If you are using Vista’s offline folders feature and you suspect that the offline cache has gone corrupt, or if you simply want to reset the cache, follow these steps.

1. Open up registry editor (WARNING: Only for Advanced Users)
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Csc
3. Add a new key (folder) called Parameters
4. Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Csc\Parameters, add a new DWORD called FormatDatabase and set its value to 1

If you want to completely disable the offline folders functionality, you must also stop and disable the offline folders service:

net stop “Offline Files”

WMIC SERVICE WHERE Caption=“Offline Files” CALL ChangeStartMode “Disabled”

There is an issue in Vista where a user tries to open a document from a document library in Sharepoint and they are prompted by Office to authenticate themselves. This would be acceptable behavior if the user weren’t already authenticated on the MOSS site they were browsing.

For some reason, when XP users try to open the same document from Sharepoint, they DO NOT get prompted for authentication. This is a Vista only issue. I’ve stumbled across many newsgroup posts that claim that this issue has something to do with the “Protected Mode” in IE7. Their recommended solution is to add the Sharepoint site to Trusted Sites in Internet Explorer 7 and to disable “Protected Mode”.

However, even after adding the site to trusted sites in IE and disabling protected mode, the issue still persists. The issue is only replicable after a fresh reboot - once a user authenticates in office, those credentials are cached for future use. Due to this caching in office, many people cannot pinpoint how to replicate this issue.

SOLUTION 1

The First SOLUTION to this issue is to DISABLE the WebClient service in Vista. Here is a quick script that accomplishes this: VistaMossOfficeMossSSOFix.bat Here is the code for those who’d like to incorporate this script into their environment:

net stop “WebClient”
WMIC SERVICE WHERE Caption=“WebClient” CALL ChangeStartMode “Disabled”

SOLUTION 2

There is also a second workaround that involves tricking IE to use a fake proxy and to have IE bypass the fake proxy for everything - this workaround is PREFERRED since the first Solutions ends up severing some of the nicer integration features between Office and MOSS (such as the ability to save directly from office on to a sharepoint document library)

In Internet Options, click the “Connections” tab and then click “LAN Settings”:

Click “Advanced” and enter * as an exception to the proxy:

Conclusion

In conclusion, the SECOND SOLUTION seems to be more appropriate as the first one tends to do more harm than good.

Often times there are situations where you want to use batch files that run on a continuous basis but are aware of the date that they are running on.

Let me illustrate by using as example. Let’s say that I want to backup a critical executable file on a daily basis by simply using the copy command in DOS but I want the backup filename to reflect today’s date. If today was 08/09/2007, i want my target filename to be backup20070809.exe

In order to accomplish that with a batch file, use the following code-

date /t > temp.txt
set /p date= < temp.txt
del temp.txt

echo %date:~4,2%
echo %date:~7,2%
echo %date:~10,4%

The last three lines can be taken out and you can use the code from the last 3 lines to perform your backup operation

As you can see from the screenshot above, I have a svchost process that is killing my CPU and hogging most of its time. However, since the svchost process is generic and is a container for services on your computer, what is unknown is what exact service is this svchost process running.

In order to troubleshoot to see which service is contained in this instance of svchost, notice its PID (Process ID). Then open up a command window (Start>Run>cmd) and type

” tasklist /svc “

That should give you a list that looks like this:

Notice the entry for svchost.exe with the same PID (Process ID) as the one that is causing trouble. In my case, the instance of svchost causing trouble is hosting 13 different services (talk about unlucky numbers). From here on, simply try shutting each service down and see if it leads to an effect on your performance. In order to selectively shut down each service individually, open a new command window and type-

” net stop <myservice> “

Example: net stop CscService

If you do not see a performance increase after shutting down an individual service then simply turn it back on and move on to the next one. To turn the service back on, use the same command as above but replace ’stop’ with ’start’-

net start CscService

Once you actually do find the rogue service, you can disable it from starting the next time you turn your computer on. To do this, go to Start > Run > services.msc and find the name of the rogue service. The name of the service can be learned from the command prompt where you turned it off. For example, when I type “net stop CscService”, the command prompt will echo “Stopping Offline Files Service”. That should tell you that the name of the service is “Offline Files” and this is what you should look for in the services.msc screen.

Once you find the rogue service in the services.msc screen, simply right click > Properties and choose to disable this service from the drop-down menu.