TO-Tech Blog

One of the big surpises I got from Vista was Sidebar. Why was it a surprise? I tried Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets) and Apple Dashboard in Mac OS X. But, neither one caught my interest enough to keep using them. Apple Dashboard, in particular, really caught my interest before its release. But, I didn’t like its forced mode switching. You are either using the Tiger desktop or you are in Dashboard mode. So, the inclusion of Vista’s Sidebar did not interest me at first. In fact, it did not interest me the second time I looked at it during the late Beta-2 cycle because it didn’t seem to work well even for a beta release component.

This all changed when I revisted it during the Release Candidate 2 stage though. For reasons I can’t clearly identify enough to articulate, the simple single function gadgets became not just useful, but somehow indispensible. For me, one of the reasons to move from XP to Vista was to have Sidebar and its Gadgets available.

Here’s a couple of tips to get you started. If the solid, sometimes brightly colored Gadgets, seem a bit visually intrusive, you can set opacity levels (transparency) for each individual Gadget. If you right click on a Gadget, a pop-up menu appears. If you select the Opacity option, you should see a side menu appear as in the screencap above that lets you set transparency. If you hover the mouse pointer over a gadget, it pops back to 100% opacity (solid) again. I have my Gadgets set to 40% opacity. You can see what it looks like in the second screencap.

You can find Sidebar global settings options in the Control Panel applet named Windows Sidebar. As you can see in the third screencap, it lets you decide where to place the Sidebar (left or right) and which monitor to display it on if you have more than one.

You can find more Sidebar Gadgets in the Windows Live Gallery. And, you can get in-depth information at MicrosoftGadgets.com.

One of the Vista innovations that caught my attention early on was ReadyBoost. It lets you take a USB 2.0 flashdrive as virtual memory to enhance performance. Note that this does not add to system RAM. So, you won’t see your available memory go from 1GB to 2GB if you add a 1GB flashdrive.

I stuck a 1GB Sandisk Cruzer Mini USB 2.0 flashdrive in my cheap PC. Since Vista was using 128MB of my 1GB system RAM for shared video, I had about 860MB of system RAM left. Vista assigned 870MB of the USB drive as ReadyBoost virtual  memory. It reported that the drive was capable of 5789 KB/sec for random reads and 3573 KB/sec for sequential reads. Vista’s minimum requirements are 2500 KB/sec and 1750 KB/sec. So, my aged flash drive more than met those specs.

I ran what seemed to me to be one of the most memory intensive apps I use, Virtual PC 2007 Release Candidate (running a Linux Guest OS). I didn’t take any hard numbers. But, the system overall seemed more responsive than it did without ReadyBoost.

You can read an interesting Q&A with Matt Ayers (Microsoft Windows Client Peformance Program Manager) on Tom Archer’s blog at…

ReadyBoost Q&A

…to get some real details about this Vista feature.

IMHO the paperless office is about as appealing as a paperless restroom. So, one of my early system checks was to see if I could print from an HP Photosmart 7760 on my freshly upgraded cheap Vista PC. To my disappointment the answer was no. However, this problem was flagged by the Vista Upgrade Advisor. So, I was not terribly surprised. I ran a few searches and found a discussion on LockerGnome about the much newer HP PhotoSmart 7960 that gave me the slap-on-the-forehead insight I needed. Both the 7900 series and 7700 series drivers are very similar to the HP Photosmart 7800 driver that is available in Vista. Manually installing the 7800 driver for my 7760 worked. As noted in the discussion board thread, the ink supply information is not provided. But, it lets me get printed output. And, that is good enough for now. Let’s hope HP provides updated complete Vista drivers for its printer lines.

After using Windows Vista Ultimate Edition for a few minutes, I noticed it seemed really sluggish. This didn’t make sense since I had used it on even more resource challenged test PCs and it didn’t seem so slow on those PCs. Looking at the system’s task list I could see something named MSKDETCT.EXE using up almost all the CPU cycles. What the heck is that? It is part of McAfee’s SpamKiller product. But, wait, I have never bought or installed McAfee SpamKiller! Ah, but I had bought and installed McAfee VirusScan 2006 in Windows Media Center Edition before upgrading my cheap PC to Windows Vista. However, McAfee’s several-times-a-day pop-ups asking me to upgrade to one thing or another (including McAfee SpamKiller if I recall correctly) annoyed me so much that I uninstalled it and replaced it with Grisoft’s AVG Free Edition. But, it looks like the uninstalled did not uninstall everything. It left an entire folder with what is probably McAfee’s SpamKiller buy-me buy-me ad pop-up. It had apparently laid dormant after being uninstalled under Windows XP Media Center Edition but came to life after upgrading to Vista.

I manually deleted the McAfee folder under Programs. Then, I used good ol’ MSCONFIG (yep, it still exists under Vista) to remove McAfee SpamKiller Detect from the Startup services list. Vista became much more responsive after this minor system surgery.

The recently released version 7.5 of…

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

…claims to have full compatibility with the latest Windows Vista version. So, I upgraded from veresion 7.1 to 7.5 under Windows XP Media Center Edition before starting the Vista upgrade.

After being amazed by seeing Vista Aero Glass features with only shared video RAM, I ran into an AVG pop-up asking me for an activation key. I had never seen that in 7.1 so I wasn’t sure what to do next. I finally had to manually terminate the AVG process. Then, I downloaded a fresh copy of AVG Free Edition 7.5 and reinstalled it under Vista. This seemed to fix the problem. No more requests for an activation key.

However, when I booted the Vista PC the next day, AVG crashed at startup. I manually started it and tried test scan. It seemed to work. But, I need to test a few more boot cycles before deciding whether to keep it on the system or replace it with ClamWin (an Open Source anti-virus product).

Given the advisory warnings about the video, sound, and networking hardware on my cheap PC, I was a bit worried that my PC would be less than fully functional after upgrading it from Windows XP Media Center Edition to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Since the PC provided video using Shared Video RAM instead of a dedicated graphics card, I did not expect to see the full Aero Glass Features (transparency, Flip-3D, etc.). In fact, this had been my experience using a Dell Optiplex GX280 desktop and Dell Lattitude D600 notebook during Vista beta-testing. The Optiplex did not have a dedicated video card and did not display Glass features. The Lattitude had dedicated video card with 32MB video RAM. But, that was below the 128MB RAM required for Glass. So, it didn’t provide me with Glass features either. So, imagine my surprise when I saw this on my cheap PC…

YouTube Video: TO-Tech Demo of Aero Glass on a Cheap PC

The transparency effect was immediately noticeable after the login. And, pressing Windows-Tab brought up the Flip-3D effect. This eMachines T6420 with just Shared Video RAM had full Aero Glass Features working on it.

I guess I did not understand the Vista Aero Glass requirements at all. It appears that you do not need 128MB of dedicated video RAM. You just need 128MB of video RAM (Shared is ok) and the right graphics chip on the system board (an nVidea 6600 in this case).

Here’s a near blow-by-blow timeline of my upgrade process from Windows XP Windows Media Edition to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. I upgraded using a DVD burned from the production ISO file.

• 1321 - Typed in activation code. The installer looked at my system and identified potential upgrade issues. The interesting thing about this is that the list was a bit different from the one the Vista Upgrade Advisor created. It did not, for example, list nVidia Networking as a possible problem. And, it added the Sun Java Scheduler as a possible problem. Another addition that did not show up in the Adivsor output was the nVideo Display driver.
• 1326 - File copying began
• 1333 - Getting files 19% done
• 1340 - Getting files 67% done
• 1344 - The screen fills with a blue gradient fill and the words Upgrading Windows appears
• 1347 - Expanding files 21% done
• 1359 - Expanding files 93% done
• 1400 - Installing features and updates phase
• 1401 - The PC rebooted on its own
• 1403 - The message “Please wait a moment” appears
• 1405 - The screen background changes to black and then changes to “Completing upgrade”
• 1415 - Completing upgrade 28% done
• 1426 - Completing upgrade 46% done
• 1432 - Ack, I left the external USB hard drive plugged in. The Vista upgrader ran a disk check on it that took a few minutes.
• 1438 - The screen blanks out to black again
• 1440 - Completing upgrade 64% appears
• 1445 - Vista asks to verify my timezone
• 1451 - Vista runs a performance check
• 1501 - Vista login prompt appears

The upgrade process took about 90 minutes (I walked away or looked away a couple of times and when I returned there was a prompt or two). It would have saved a few minutes if I had turned the external hard drive off before beginning the upgrade.

So, how does the upgraded Vista PC work? Stay tuned for the next week or two to read a couple of surprises I ran into after logging in.

I performed most of my Windows Vista beta and release candidate testing on either a Dell Optiplex GX280 with 512MB RAM or a Parallels Desktop for Mac virtual machine. I installed Vista Ultimate Edition on a Dell Lattitude D600 notebook a couple of months ago after its hard disk died and, basically, I had nothing to lose installing Vista on a freshly delivered new hard drive (warranty replacement). Most of my installations were clean installations since the early beta versions did not permit upgrade installations. Installation times varied between 2.5 hours and 45 minutes.

This was the first time I had an opportunity to upgrade a sort-of production desktop PC running Windows XP (Media Center Edition). Here’s what happened before actually starting the installation.

I ran the Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor. Here’s what it told me in a nutshell.

• Realtek High Definition Audio: Required a driver upgrade.
• Nvidia nForce Networking Controller:  No compatibility data. Oh oh.
• HP Photosmart 7700 Series printer: No compatibility data. Hmm.
• Nero OEM: Must be uninstalled before upgrading to Vista.
• PowerDVD: Might have minor issues.
• Windows Messenger: Might have minor issues.
• Microsoft ActiveSync: Has compatibility issues.

Except for the networking issue (eMachines uses the nVidia chipset for pretty much everything it appears), I wasn’t too worried. So, I pressed on.

I spent a couple of hours making sure I could recover from a totally botched upgrade. Here’s what I did.

• Copied data files and OEM drivers from C: drive to D: drive (2 hard disks in this PC).
• Copied critical data to an external USB hard drive.
• Used Drive Image XML to backup a complete drive image of C: to an external USB hard drive.

I’ve been running various beta and release candidate versions of Microsoft Windows Vista for since 2005. So, I thought upgrading my cheap home PC from Media Center Edition to Vista Ultimate Edition was going to be a footnote blog item. I was wrong.

So, I’m planning to blog about upgrading a cheap ($500 after rebates) eMachines T6420 desktop over the next week or two. I think some people might be surprised by some of the things I found. And, remember, I’ve been using Vista for 18 months or so on other PCs.

So, let’s start with the system configuration for this T6420 desktop. It is pretty simple and unimpressive.

• AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (~2.2GHz)
• 1GB RAM
• 200GB C: drive
• 160BG D: drive (added after purchase)
• No graphics card. Uses shared video RAM

I’ve been testing using Microsoft’s OneCare to backup files to both DVD+RW and external USB hard drives. The optical disc backup works fine but is slow and requires disc changes for large drives.

The external hard drive method worked a bit better. But, I found myself wanting to start over and change the backup scheme. This turned out to be a problem because Microsoft OneCare creates some kind of specially protected file named DO_NOT_DELETE_mediaID in each of the subdirectories. This file cannot be deleted, renamed, or otherwise changed using what most of us would consider to be the usual methods of taking care of such a problem. A bit of searching around found a solution in the Microsoft OneCare web forum though.

How To Delete Backups

The trick turned out to be a command line command that I had never heard of: cacls. This command can modify the Access Control List. It should be used like this to make the files under the Windows OneCare Backup directory eraseable.

cacls “G:\Windows OneCare Backup” /t /g administrators:F

Here are a couple of things you should note:

• G is the external drive letter. Change it to what your external drive is assigned to.
• There must be a space between /t and /g.
• Note that administrators is the group name, not administrator which is an account name
• The F after the colon indicates Full Control. It is not a drive designation