If you are crazy enough to try a beta version of Microsofts upcoming operating system you might want to head straight over to microsofts vista website and download a version for either 32-bit or 64-bit. You will need a Microsoft Live account to download windows vista. You can also order a dvd that will be send right to your home.
Windows Process Information
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL, what do you see ? The windows taskmanager with lots of processes, showing a filename like svhost.exe and a memory usage of that process. Besides checking for trojans, spyware and virii: What´s a good way to check for possible causes if your computer behaves slowly ? Right, the taskmanager. Unfortunatly the process don´t give you lot´s of information which application did cause them to run on your windows version.
Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor
Do you know if your system will be able to run the upcoming Microsoft operating system Windows Vista ? The minimum requirements are a cpu with at least 800 MHz, 512 MB of Ram and a DirectX 9 capable graphics processor. The requirements for the full Vista experience look like one for a modern computer game: 1Ghz Cpu, 1Gb of Ram, 128 Mb graphics adapter with Pixel Shader 2.0 support and a 40Gb hard drive with 15 Gb free space.
Configure NT-Services Securely (for NT and XP)
Do you need network services if you are not connected to a network ever with your computer that is running windows xp or windows nt ? No you don´t. Still network services are running as default services when you run windows and this leads to security risks which can be avoided by turning them off. The configure nt services securely website has unfortunatly only a small section of their tips in english but the rest should be understandable while using a translation service.
Test Internet Explorer 7 Beta without installing it
If you are interested in taking a look at the new internet explorer 7 beta without installing it at all this procedure comes in handy. First you will have to download the newest beta from the microsoft homepage and use winrar to extract the contents of the exe file to a location on your hard drive.
How to disable Microsofts new Anti-Piracy Program Update
It seems that the method that I previously posted is not working really well. If you rename the files windows will try and install the update again. Therefor one has to find another way to disable this, what we do is disable the execute bit on wgalogon.dll. That way, winlogon can’t call it as a notification package at boot, and since WgaLogon is responsible for running and maintaining WgaTray.exe, no more tray popups either.
How to disable Microsofts new Anti-Piracy Program
A dig user named Manno posted this one liner over at digg.com and I thought it´s worth an article. I´am not able to test if it´s really that easy because a) my windows is legit and b) I´am not able to download the new program. Let me know if it works though. It is assumed that the “patch” is already installed, do the following:
