I could never figure out which AMD processors have the AMD-V virtualization assist feature. Search AMD’s website for this information proved futile. Fortunately, I read a Microsoft newsgroup post where a Virtual Machines MVP provide a link to a Wikipedia entry that provides this information. Here’s the link to that Wikipedia page…
I remembered seeing the Realtek audio driver being listed as a problem for the Windows Vista SP1 update. So, I wasn’t too surprised to see this problem. Fortunately, the Check for solutions online button actually led me to the Realtek driver page with updated Vista drivers at…
…and the new drivers resulted in a functional audio system on my Vista box.
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is available. Before installing it, you might want to read more about it at…
Microsoft TechNet Windows Vista TechCenter SP1
The 32-bit version is huge weighing in at 434MB. The 64-bit version is, un, huge-er 
at 762MB. And, be aware that some applications, especially security related apps, might break after SP1 is installed.
Hmm…
…Let me see if I understand this correctly. I have the Ultimate version of Windows Vista. But, I need to buy more? And, what happened to all those ultimate extras that we Ultimate Edition owners/users were supposed to get??? Here’s what I think. Take a cue from Apple and roll all the Windows editions into Ultimate Edition and charge US$129.95. One edition. All the features. One version for support staff to deal with. Think about it.
I’ve been using VMware Fusion on a Mac to play with Fedora 8 (Linux). However, I just learned about this blog entry that gives step-by-step instructions (with screen caps) for installing Fedora 8 under Virtual PC 2007.
Fedora 8 (werewolf) on Virtual PC 2007
The important screen cap to pay attention to is the one change during the grub reboot to add i8042.noloop (mentioned in my CentOS/RHEL blog entry) to deal with the mouse problem.
One of the reasons I’m using Virtual PC less and less is that VMware and Parallels does a much much better job of installing and running Guest OSes.
I’m looking forward to trying Hyper-V under Windows Server 2008 as soon as I can get a PC with the specs to run it properly.
I’ve been managing my family photos on a Windows XP PC because it deals with files copying, etc.) much faster than Windows Vista on a much faster (hardware-wise) PC. However, XP decided it could start to burn a data DVD but couldn’t figure out how to finish it (I let the process go on for 20 minutes before killing the process from Task Manager). So, I copied the photos from the XP PC to the Vista PC using an external drive. I guess don’t burn data DVDs often using Vista because I noticed that it default to burning a Live File System. This may have been marginally ok when using DVD+RW discs was more common than using an external hard drive for read-write external storage, but it makes no sense now. The Life File System is horrendously slow. It would take hours to write even a gig or two. Fortunately, I clicked on the formatting options and saw and chose the Mastered option instead.
The second thing I noticed is that the slowest recording speed setting available is 6x. I generally only burn a couple of backup data DVDs a month (usually just photos). So, I have a bunch of 4x DVD+R discs I was using on my XP PC. Fortunately, I have 16x DVD+R discs too and used those instead. But, I wish a 4x option was available too.
I hope this is the final HP PhotoSmart C6250 horror story I post here
The printer hardware itself is fine although it is (1) extremely noisy during startup and (2) locks the PC it is connected to if it is on during boot up. However, I had to remove all the printer’s applications software from a Windows XP networked PC this past weekend after suffering through weeks of slowness and occasional system freezing. The problem was that HP’s application monitoring software would go into some kind of endless loop if the printer was not turned on and, therefore, undetectable. Since HP’s software had been unable to actually work with the networked printer for the past two weeks anyway, I didn’t see much point in debugging it further. The XP PC runs much much faster now and has not locked up since removing the HP software this past weekend.
Just a note to myself. I don’t use any of the apps on the list. But, you can never tell…
I bought an HP PhotoSmart C6250 multifunction (print, scan, copy) printer just before the holiday season to print the annual family newsletter (multiple pages, lots of photos). The printer did the job but has been an endless source of frustration.
The first problem is that it locks up my Windows Vista PC if the printer is turned on before the PC has completed booting. This is NOT a Vista problem. It locks up right at the initial BIOS screen. This PC has worked fine with two other USB printers. So, the printer ports should be fine.
The next problem is that Windows Vista insists that I have a new printer every time I boot and reinstalls the drivers each time. This is maddening.
Vista seems to lose track of the printer every now and then and the print jobs stalls in the queue without letting me know there is a problem.
HP’s scanning software sometimes saves scanned photos to My Scans. Other times in stores it to a folder under it created under that folder (e.g., 2008-02 (Feb)). Sometimes it brings up the HP browsing software after a scan. Other times it brings up Windows Explorer.
Next, printing over the network (the C6250 is LAN enabled) from a Windows XP PC worked for a few days and then could not find the printer after that even after I manually entered the printer’s IP address.
Finally, HP updated C6250’s driver but never renamed it. Both the old driver and the one released in January 2008 are named PS_AIO_02_Network_ENU.exe. However, the two files have completed different file sizes. And, of course, the earlier one was released prior to January 2008.
The first HP printer I ever bought for myself was the HP ThinkJet released in 1984. I think I bought mine sometime in 1985. So, I’ve bought a series of HP printer for over 20 years now and have been pretty happy with them up until Vista was released, their inability to provide printers for old, and now, apparently even new printers.
So, so long HP! My next printer will probably be a Canon.
I noticed this while beta-testing Windows Vista but never did anything about it: Windows Vista doesn’t let you enable the Administrator account from a simple GUI the way Windows XP does.
Enable Vista’s hidden administrator, and password-protect its XP equivalent
The trick is to run the CMD command line window as Administrator (right click on the item in the Start menu), then use the net command as the CNET article describes. Every Windows user should have a separate standby account to use in case your main account is messed up somehow.