Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by JoesephKoo

Best Windows Website Contest is being organised

JoesephKoo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:27:34 +0800

There is a "Best Windows Website Contest 2009", to discover and to award the best Windows bloggers and website owners.

The Panel of Judges is very eminent and consists of:

Howard Lo, Microsoft’s Regional Team Manager (APAC), Ed Bott, MVP, EdBott.com , The Geek Lowell Heddings HowToGeek.com, Steven Sinchak, MVP, Tweaks.com, Rafael Rivera, WithinWindows.com, Paul Schottland, Microsoft, Emil Protalinski, ArsTechnica – One Microsoft Way, Corrine Chorney, MVP, SecurityGarden, James Fisher, MVP, WindowsTalk.org and Anand Khanse MVP of TheWindowsClub.com | WinVistaClub.com.

There are many prizes and the first 50 to particpate will get a one year paid license of a-squared antivirus+anti-spyware for FREE-its worth US$ 40.. just to enter your blog.

So if there are any windows bloogers here ... check it out...

Windows 7 themepack for Asia

JoesephKoo — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:53:51 +0800

Windows Club has released a Windows 7 themepack for Asia.

Visit countries from Japan to Taiwan, from Thailand to India, China to Hong Kong and Malaysia. See if you can recognize the 12 sights. Enjoy the change every hour, every day !

Pretty cool walls

Download.

Best Windows Vista Blog Contest

JoesephKoo — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:24:09 +0800

Here there ia organising a contest to recognise some of the best Windows Vista Blogs and Websites.

Steve Sinchak MVP of TweakVista.com, John Barnett MVP of VistaSupport.mvps.org, Kerry Brown MVP of VistaHelp.ca, James Stables of Windows Vista Magazine, Emil Protalinski of Arstechnica are some of the judges.

This should be a great opportunity for Vista bloggers to showcase their blogs. There are prizes to be won too. The contest will be open from 10th Aug 2008 to 09th Sept 2008. So if anybody has Vista Blog good to try.

Details HERE.

Get Get PAID Version Of A-Squared AntiMalware FREE

JoesephKoo — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:34:35 +0800

Another find. This site is giving the PAID Version Of A-Squared Anti Malware absolutely FREE and that also FULLY LEGAL.

This product costs US$ 39.95 for a years license. But you will be entitled to a 12 month FULL license of this product free ! The offer includes full version upgrades within the license time, and support too. Click HERE to go get it.

NEW - Royale Blue Theme For Windows Vista

JoesephKoo — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:01:39 +0800

Hey, check out this new Royale Theme For Windows Vista.

If you liked the Royale XP Theme, on your XP, you should try this out. Its awesome.

Check out the Download Page.

Vista' BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH !

JoesephKoo — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:32:03 +0800

Windows' infamous "blue screen of death" now has a deadlier cousin ! Microsoft will release a Black screen of Death now, to haunt Vista pirates ! This is not to be mixed up with the Windows 3.x 'black screen of death', which occurred when a DOS application failed to execute properly.

As a part of its anti-piracy initiative, Microsoft has activated a function in Vista called 'Reduced Functionality.' This is a specific function in Vista that effectively disables nongenuine copies of Windows. Therefore anyone who has a pirated copy of Vista will experience:
- A black screen after one hour of browsing
- No start menu or task bar
- No desktop

Source : www.winvistaclub.com

Microsoft confirms Vista SP1 by Q1 2008, and XP SP

JoesephKoo — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:45:25 +0800

Microsoft has finally confimed that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 beta will be released to a moderate size 10-15K audience in a few weeks. "We currently expect to deliver SP1 during the first quarter of 2008, but we will collect customer feedback from our upcoming beta process before setting a final date. Quality is our most important factor when determining availability."

What is in the Windows Vista Service Pack 1?
What improvements are there to reliability in SP1?
What languages will Windows Vista SP1 include?
What drivers are new in SP1?
How large will the Service Pack 1 be?

FULL REPORT : http://www.winvistaclub.com/i2.html

Gaming on Vista : Pro's & Con's

JoesephKoo — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:51:53 +0800

...Now, Microsoft has tied up with LucasArts, AMD, THQ, Nvidia, etc. for Gaming. But all said, not many titles for DX10 are available as of now. Also, the titles that are available support DX9.0 rendering as well. This can be attributed to the lack of DX10 compatible graphic cards, as, while both Nvidia and ATi have formally released DX10 compatible cards, the range of cards available is very narrow. Also, a recent hack has claimed that though DX10 was supposed to run only on Vista, the creator has in fact, been able to run the DX10 games on Windows XP as well! Whether this actually works, remains to be seen. With all this talk of DirectX, one may think that OpenGL is forgotten, however, that is not the case, and Vista fully supports OpenGL. Wikipedia has also compiled a pretty exhaustive list of games that will feature DX10 support...

...One related point; worthy of attention, is the PhysX (physics) engine. Many of the mainstream graphics card manufacturers are NOW including PhysX engines as standard but they are also available as separate plug-in cards. These cards create more realistic smoke, fire, water and clothing than has been previously seen in PC games. Lastly, for fans of old DOS based games, does Vista spell doom? Nope! ...

PRO's.
1. Hardware compatibility with Xbox 360 controllers. WOW!! Also on the way is a wireless dongle which will also give support the headset, steering wheel, controller, etc. This is specially a cool feature for those who already own an Xbox system.
2. Cross platform support with Xbox 360. This feature though not highlighted much in the upcoming titles, will allow for cross platform gaming and communication.
3. With the recent press release, we can be sure that Microsoft is committed towards Vista for Gaming. The games coming up, prove that.
4. DX10. You can hate it now, but you have to accept the fact that DX10 is very much pushing up the ante as far as graphics is concerned. Screenshots are testimony to that. Also for an extra WOW, lookup the official trailer of the game 'Crysis' set to release soon , which is SURE to keep you spell bound by the sheer quality of in-game graphics.
5. Parental Controls over games. Now whether this should be considered a 'Pro' or a 'Con" is debatable. Vista allows parents to allow or to block individual games, set time limits, etc. Time for kids to get smarter!
6. Launch saved games directly. Microsoft has its own ways of adding the 'WOW effect' and this feature is one of those. A nice addition.
7. Better multi-player functionality. Vista improves on this aspect of gaming and multi-player gaming is now really much smoother, without hitches.
8. Games Explorer. Keeps track of all the games on the system. A bit buggy currently. Let's hope that Microsoft fixes it in the SP1 for Vista.

CON's.
1. Compatibility problems. This is one of the main problems plaguing Windows Vista. Support for old hardware and software is lacking. So some games refuse to work, even in compatibility mode.
2. Hardware availability. Let's face it, the amount of graphics hardware available for DX10 currently is very less and though this will change over a period of time, it is currently a major deterrent for heavy gamers to move to Vista.
3. Lack of titles. With most of the industry adopting the wait and watch strategy, has meant that there are hardly any titles available which actually harness the actual capability of DX10.
4. High Cost. Vista has high basic requirements, due to which playing games on Vista requires up-to-date and powerful hardware which is costly.
5. Shortcuts. Most of the gamers would rather prefer to have the shortcut of frequently played games on their desktop. Restricting this is an unwanted feature which can be rather irritating.

WinVistaClub

Avoid Tweaks of Dubious Value in Windows.

JoesephKoo — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:59:56 +0800

Lets face it ! Tweaking gives us the satisfaction...of having done something to beat the system ! There is that urge, esp amongst die-hard tweakers, to squeeze out the last drop of performance ! Frankly speaking, the best "tweak" is to throw RAM at it ! Its one BIG healthy dose of tonic to perk up your machine.

There are some tweaks which can at best be considered to be of dubious value.

Though most of them may not cause much harm, some of them, if applied indiscriminately may actually hurt performance. Some of them worked with older Windows versions, but are redundant & irrelevant now.

Always Unload DLL (Disable DLL Caching) to free up memory and improve performance. Using this tweak on Windows 2000, XP or Vista has absolutely no effect. This registry key is no longer supported in all post-2000 Windows OS's.

Cleaning the Prefetch Folder. Every time you clean up the Prefetch folder, you delay application load times, the next time you launch them. Its only after the second time that you regain optimal application load times. Only one Prefetch file is created per application . Windows cleans this folder at 128 entries, and the old ones automatically get deleted after a few weeks. In Vista this folder does not occupy mre than around 50MB. Cleaning the Prefetcher can therefore be construed actually as a...a temporary self-inflicted unoptimization ! Now why would you want to do that ! The developers of the memory management system of Windows Vista have done a good job...no question about this one.

Disabling Certain Services. Dont take this advice to its extremes, for in fact this could actaully cripple your system ! For instance Disabling the task Schedular to improve performance actuall prevents the Prefetcher and the Layout.ini file from forming or being updated ! Forcing, inter alia, longer application startup times. Never ever shutdown the System Restore Service...never know when it may save your day ! Disbaling the DNS Client Service may decrease the the overall performance of the client computer, and the network traffic for DNS queries increases if the DNS resolver cache is deactivated. This effectively reduces Internet Performance for sites you have previously visited and puts an unnecessary load on your ISP's DNS server.

So do refer a good Services Guide like BlackVipers. Or simply use a safe Program like Tune-Up Utilities. Shutting down services indisciminately is a sureshot prescription for trouble !

Page (Swap) File Tweaks. "Create a Fixed Size Page File to improve performance" : This was relevant in the earlier days of Windows; Definately irrelevant for Vista ! "Eliminate your Page File completely, if you have a large amount of memory installed" : There are simply NO published benchmarks establishing any performance gains from doing so ! And in any case Windows wasn't designed to run without a page file.

SOURCE : WinVistaClub

Vista's SystemRestore set 2 delete aftr 136 yrs.

JoesephKoo — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:55:25 +0800

In Vista, SystemRestore is set to delete restore points after roughly 136 years ... yeah, let that sink...

Normally Windows uses up to 15 percent of a drive's available space to save restore points. In XP, the option to change this figure was configurable from the System Restore tab of the System Properties dialog box. But sadly this option is no longer offered in Vista.

But you can do so as follows :
Open regedit and go to
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\
SystemRestore\Cfg Double-click the DiskPercent.
The default is f (in hexadecimal) which is 15 in decimal. For making it say 10% type 'a'

Now again, how frequently you'd like to have your SystemRestore points auto-created can also b configured as follows :
Open regedit and go to
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion
\SystemRestore
You can change the value RPGlobalInterval from its default setting of 86,400 seconds (24 hours) to, say, 43200 (a8c0) if u want it created every 12 hrs.

As and how your new restore points get created, the older ones get deleted due to the availble space contstraint.

Otherwise by default, in Vista, SystemRestore is set to delete restore points after roughly 4,294,967,295 seconds or 136 years, which was a mere 90 days in XP ! The idea apparantly, is to delete them only when absolutely necessary due to space constraint!!! But err...136 years !!!

So unless u want your grandchildren to see your RestorePoints, you can also change this interval too. Change the value of RPLifeInterval in the same key; a setting of 7,776,000 seconds (or 76a700 in hexadecimal) is equivalent to 90 days.

To create System Restore Points on the fly, try System Restore Point Creator. Using this utility, you can create System Restore Points in One click. Works on Vista ! To change the frequency of the System Restore Points formation, without using the Registry Editor, you can download CSRF Utility.

SOURCE : http://www.winvistaclub.com/tips.html