Fixing Windows Vista again
In the three previous installments of this series, I discussed ways to improve the performance of Windows Vista by changing some settings (especially those installed by an OEM PC maker).
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19.5.2008 Fixing Windows Vista: Taming UAC
The User Account Control feature in Windows Vista has been known to drive normally level-headed people over the edge with frustration. If you find it annoying, you might be tempted to turn it off.
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1.5.2008 Fixing Vista: Faster, smarter search
In previous installments of this series, I discussed the virtues of a clean Vista install, some useful User Account Control workarounds, top tools for troubleshooting, and the wisdom of shutting off Windows system services.
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6.6.2008 Windows 7 - Maximum Supported RAM is 192 GB
Windows 7 will take the maximum amount of supported system memory well beyond the limits of Windows Vista.
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27.4.2009 Fixing Windows Vista 3 - Top Troubleshooting Tools
Do you think Windows Vista is slow, crash-prone, or unreliable? Join the crowd. Over the past year, reviews of Windows Vista by mainstream media outlets, the technical press, bloggers, and ordinary users have been, for the most part, scathing.
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7.5.2008 Neowin.net - Live Messenger 8.5 update no longer supported on XP x64
From the Inside Windows Live Messenger Team Blog: Back in November we shipped the final version of Windows Live Messenger 8.5 along with several other Windows Live applications and services.
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21.2.2008 ATI driver flaw exposes Vista kernel to attackers
An unpatched flaw in an ATI driver was at the center of the mysterious Purple Pill proof-of-concept tool that exposed a way to maliciously tamper with the Windows Vista kernel. Thanks to pacpis for this news.
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12.8.2007 Samsung Pays $300m for Price Fixing
Samsung accepted terms of a plea agreement Thursday that finds the electronics company guilty of conspiring with other manufacturers to artificially inflate the cost of computer memory, thus unnecessarily increasing the prices consumers paid.
As part of the agreement, Samsung would pay a $300 million fine in exchange for prosecutorial immunity for both the company and most of its employees. Seven people, including president of the semiconductor division Y.H. Park, were excluded from the settlement and could still face prosecution.
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1.12.2005 ATI Catalyst 7.9 drivers
ATI/AMD has released a new version of its drivers for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Version 7.9 of the ATI Catalyst drivers bring many bug fixes, speed improvements and new features.
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10.9.2007 Microsoft drops 6 bulletins, fixing 11 vulnerabilities
Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday train arrived today with six bulletins covering at least 11 vulnerabilities, most carrying the company’s highest severity rating.
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11.7.2007 AMD not eliminating ATI brand, reports false
One of the unforeseen ramifications of the AMD-ATI hookup is the new hyper-rumor-transport bus, a new technology whereby unsubstantiated rumors become fact at an alarming rate. I lamented this sad state of affairs a few weeks ago when patently false information regarding motherboard licensing was making its way around the 'net, and now we get to do it again.
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8.8.2006 AMD Gains Antitrust Approval to Buy ATI
Advanced Micro Devices said yesterday it has gained approval from key U.S., Canadian, and German antitrust regulators for its $5.4 billion plan to buy Canadian chip set developer ATI Technologies.
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7.9.2006 ATI Radeon X1650XT vs. Nvidia GeForce 7600GT
The next generation of mid-range graphics cards are just around the corner, so should you even consider purchasing a GeForce 7600GT or Radeon X1650XT graphics card?
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7.12.2006 First alleged photos of the ATI Radeon HD 5870
Today we got the first glimpse of one of the new upcoming DirectX 11 video cards from ATI. The Radeon HD 5870, also known by the codename name “Cypress”
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11.9.2009 Windows Vista - Windows Imaging File Format
With the advent of Windows Vista, Microsoft also introduced the Windows Imaging (WIM) file format. According to the Redmodn company, the Windows Imaging format is designed as a file-based disk image specific to Vista, and is an alternative to sector-based image formats because of a range of benefits.
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17.10.2007 ATI Radeon X1650 Pro vs. Nvidia GeForce 7600GS
As much as we love testing and talking about the latest innovations in PC graphics, it's only a fraction of the gamers market that can truly enjoy these high-end products as soon as they come out of the oven because of its high prices.
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31.10.2006 Microsoft to Standardize Office Format
Microsoft intends to submit Office file formats to the European standards body ECMA International, a move the company hopes will allay concerns over the company's level of control over document formats.
The company, which dominates the market for desktop productivity software, plans to hand over the technical specifications of Office 12 file formats to ECMA early next month.
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22.11.2005 Microsoft: Office Format War Over
Microsoft Office program manager Brian Jones, whose work has centered around the Open XML document format, now says the so-called format war with OpenDocument is officially over. The winner, he says, is both.
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6.3.2007 Microsoft Readies Proprietary Image Format
Microsoft have announced their new image format which is a competitor to standards like JPEG and PNG.
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27.5.2006 Microsoft: Make our HD Photo format a standard
Such is the reasoning behind a step Microsoft plans to announce Thursday: it will submit its HD Photo image format to a standards body.
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8.3.2007 Bureaucracy swamps ISO meeting on Microsoft format
FRANKFURT/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A meeting to hammer out a consensus on whether a Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) document format should become an international standard descended into near chaos this week, people close to the meeting told Reuters.
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2.3.2008 Bureaucracy swamps ISO meeting on Microsoft format
A meeting to hammer out a consensus on whether a Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) document format should become an international standard descended into near chaos this week, people close to the meeting told Reuters
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3.3.2008 Microsoft wins document format standards battle
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) has won a battle to have a key document format adopted as a global standard, improving its chances of winning government contracts and dealing a blow to supporters of a rival format.
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1.4.2008 Microsoft Takes Heat for Office 2003 SP3 File Format Blocking
CorelDraw .CDR files are one of the formats that have been blocked. Microsoft is facing criticism from a competitor and some customers for its decision to block some older file formats with Office 2003 Service Pack 3, which it released last September
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4.1.2008 How to Install Vista Language Packs MUI on all versions of Vista + video tutorial
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, and Vista Business versions of the Microsoft licensing restrictions can only preserve a language!
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23.9.2008 The Vista Built-in Super Administrator Account Has Survived in Vista SP1
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is designed to evolve the RTM version of the latest Windows client from Microsoft, made available in November 2006 to business customers, and in January 2007 to the general consumers.
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15.2.2008 Vista SP1 Is Out, XP SP3 Old News, the Pink Edition of Vista Is In
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is now nothing more than water under the bridge, now that the service pack was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, shipping to general users on March 18.
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27.3.2008 Tell Hasta la Vista to XP - Time to Upgrade to Vista SP1
Like it or not, this is the right time not only to upgrade to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 but also to tell hasta la vista to Windows XP.
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30.6.2008 Instant Change Vista Product ID with Vista ProductID Changer
In past we have reviewed number of application to recover product key like Product Key Finder, WinGuggle, Windows product Key Finder.
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1.11.2009 Vista SP1 RC1 Flies Past Vista RTM and Windows XP SP2
Despite the fact that Microsoft has expressed its official position regarding testing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 ahead of its finalization, there is simply too much of a hunger for the service pack.
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27.12.2007Nvidia Faces 51 Suits With Price-Fixing Claims Over AMD Deal
Nvidia Corp. on
Thursday said 51 civil
complaints have been filed
against it as of May 14
alleging price fixing and
anti-competitive agreements,
among other things, between
Nvidia and Advanced Micro
Devices Inc. (AMD).
Nvidia, of Santa
Clara, Calif., makes
programmable graphic
processors. Advanced Micro
Devices entered the graphics
processor market with its
acquisition of ATI
Technologies Inc. last
October.
As reported
last December, Nvidia and ATI
Technologies account for the
lion's share of graphics
chips that are sold as
independent products, with
sales leadership regularly
shifting back and forth
between the companies. ..
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24.05.2007Emails allege ATI-Nvidia price fixing conspiracy
New details have been released on the evidence backing a civil lawsuit against Nvidia and ATI (now owned by AMD) - evidence that allegedly indicates
the two companies participated in a graphics card price fixing cartel.
In June 2007, at least 51 separate complaints were lumped
together and amended into a single class action lawsuit against the GPU vendors in the US District Court of the Northern District of California.
The complaint was filed on behalf of everyone in the US who has bought a graphics card from either ATI or Nvidia from December 2002
to the present. It alleges the companies "conducted numerous secret meetings and communications in which they conspired to fix, raise, maintain and
stabilize prices of GPUs sold in the United States."
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04.09.2008AMDs Graphics Division Readies ATI CrossFireX Technology
ATI CrossFire multi-GPU technology was announced in mid-2005, but has not really gained widespread popularity since then, partly because ATIs flagship
graphics products faced delays and partly because Nvidia put tremendous efforts into popularization of its SLI multi-GPU technology. But ATI, graphics
product group of Advanced Micro Devices, may be hoping to reverse the trend with introduction of ATI CrossFireX tech.
Later this
year AMD plans to announced new ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technology that will bring such benefits as 3- and 4-way CrossFire, CrossFire Overdrive,
hybrid CrossFire and other features that are set to improve performance, compatibility, scalability and flexibility of ATIs multi-GPU technology,
sources close to AMD told X-bit labs.
The new technology will be supported by AMDs forthcoming chipsets, including AMD 790X and
AMD 790 FX that feature PCI Express Gen. 2 as well as various graphics cards, such as ATI Radeon HD 2600-series, ATI code-named RV670-series and,
perhaps, ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT/Pro/GT graphics cards. Currently AMDs graphics product group is mulling on exact configurations and specifications to
be supported via CrossFireX.
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15.10.2007ATI Releases Catalyst Beta
Driver for Windows Vista RC1
ATI is one of the first
graphic providers to make a 32
and 64-bit driver that
supports the Longhorn Display
Driver Model (LDDM) the
Microsoft Vista revolutionary
graphic driver standard as
well as the first to provide
LDDM drivers for integrated
graphics processors. By making
LDDM drivers available more
than a full year prior to
Windows Vista release, ATI
provides developers with a
stable, feature-enabled and
performance-optimized platform
for application development.
ATI is also the first to
provide Catalyst®
Windows Vista driver feedback
via our Catalyst®
Crew Feedback program.
Product series
supported:
*
Radeon® 9500, 9550,
9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X300,
X600, X700, X800, X850
series
*
Radeon® X1300, X1600,
X1800, X1900 series
*
Mobility™
Radeon® 9550, 9600,
9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700,
X800 series
*
Mobility™
Radeon® X1300, X1400,
X1600, X1800 series
*
CrossFire™ Xpress
3200 series
*
Radeon® Xpress 200,
200M series..
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04.09.2006Record labels to launch new format CMX
What do you do when the market doesn't have what you need? If you're the music industry you create a new digital format that will hopefully
encourage users to purchase entire albums instead of single tracks. The format dubbed CMX will give consumers more for their dollar when they
download albums in the newly created format. Think of current music downloads to be similar to VHS and the CMX format will be more like DVDs in that
they offer bonus content in addition to the music. CMX has a few large backers including Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI but notably it is not being
supported by Apple.
Read full story.....
neowin.net -
12.08.2009DoJ Closes AMD Antitrust Investigation
After nearly two years of investigation, chip-maker AMD has finally
announced that the US Department
of Justice is closing its antitrust investigation of ATi, a move analysts predicted from as early as the beginning of the investigation. Competitor
nVidia, which was subpoenaed at the same time as ATi,
confirmed
that the DoJ had also come to a similarly decision for them.
The story first emerged in December of 2006, just a few months after the DoJ
had given antitrust approval to the AMD/ATi merger. The acquisition was a big gamble for AMD on many fronts, and, fittingly enough, the DoJ announced
soon after that it was investigating ATi for pricing and marketing practices in the sale of its GPUs. Although details are scarce as to the exact
results of the DoJ's investigation, it seems as if the price-fixing allegations thrown at ATi and nVidia did not hold water.
Read full story.....
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15.10.2008Microsoft's Matusow and Mahugh on Office's move to open format support
"We feel we are achieving parity in how Office treats the format, by making them all part of just one simple list of formats supported by Office,"
said Microsoft Office Product Manager Doug Mahugh, in an interview with BetaNews.
For the history of applications up until now,
the specification of the format used to encode documents was defined largely and almost inescapably by the functionality of the programs which utilize
them. A format represented what an application was designed to do, and that format changed when the application changed.
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22.05.2008ATI Catalyst 7.1 for Vista RTM Released
Today, ATI released their
finalized ATI Catalyst drivers
for Windows Vista RTM.
The final drivers
provide the following features
for Windows Vista:
- Blu-ray and
HD-DVD playback
-
CrossFire support under Vista
- Native OpenGL
Vista support
-
Catalyst Install Manager for
Vista
- New Catalyst
Control Center
This release has
also fixed more than 17 issues
that were found in the
previous release. The drivers
are available for both 32-bit
and 64-bit versions of Windows
Vista.
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30.01.2007Sharp, Hitachi investigated for fixing price of Nintendo DS screens
Sharp and Hitachi said Thursday that their LCD display businesses were probed to look for evidence of price fixing in portable game console displays...
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28.02.2008Why you can't have Vista SP1 yet: Microsoft fixing driver problem
Despite being released to manufacturing last week, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is not being made available to all customers because Microsoft is
trying to resolve an issue in which hardware devices may stop functioning after SP1 is installed...
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12.02.2008ATI Driver Package Opens Vista to Flaw
In case you haven't seen it,
the ATI driver package can
potentially open your Vista
kernel up to a compromise. ATI
and MS are working to rectify
the issue.
In an interview, Ionescu
confirmed his tool was
exploiting a vulnerability in
an ATI driver - atidsmxx.sys,
version 3.0.502.0 - to patch
the kernel to turn off certain
checks for signed drivers.
This meant that a malicious
rootkit author could
essentially piggyback on
ATI's legitimately signed
driver to tamper with the
Vista kernel.
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13.08.2007LCD Price-Fixing Probe Widens
A probe into price fixing of
LCD displays is expanding,
according to press reports on
Tuesday. Three countries are
investigating the actions of
companies that include:
LG.Philips, Samsung, Sharp,
and a joint venture between
Seiko Epson and Sharp...
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12.12.2006HD DVD, Blu-ray playback added to new entry-level ATI cards
For years, ATI played itself as the performance leader in the graphics space. But now as part of AMD, which is having a difficult time of late making
its case for CPU performance, ATI may have to make like its new corporate parent for a little while...
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23.01.2008Fifth Samsung Exec Pleads Guilty in DRAM Price Fixing Probe
Reuters and the Associated
Press are both reporting that
a fifth senior executive of
world #1 DRAM manufacturer
Samsung has agreed to plead
guilty in connection with the
US Justice Dept.'s
investigation into memory
industry collusion and price
fixing...
betanews.com -
22.12.2006HP Goes Format-Neutral, Backs
HD DVD
HP publicly announced its
support for HD DVD Friday,
officially joining the HD DVD
Promotions Group and saying it
would remain neutral. As
expected, the core reason of
HP's cooling to Sony's
Blu-ray disc technology was
the group's failure to use
iHD, which would be supported
natively in Windows Vista...
betanews.com -
17.12.2005Catalyst 8.12 display driver
AMD has released the new Catalyst 8.12 display driver for Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit, Windows Media Center Edition, Windows Vista 32-bit and
Windows Vista 64-bit. The new Catalyst 8.12 drivers, aside from performance improvements, enable ATI Stream technology. View: ATI website
Download: ATI Catalyst 8.12 Display Driver
Read full
story.....
neowin.net -
11.12.2008ATI driver flaw exposes Vista kernel to attackers
An unpatched flaw in an ATI
driver was at the center of
the mysterious Purple Pill
proof-of-concept tool that
exposed a way to maliciously
tamper with the Windows Vista
kernel.
Purple Pill, a utility
released by Alex Ionescu and
yanked an hour later after the
kernel developer realized that
the ATI driver flaw was not
yet patched, provided an easy
way to load unsigned drivers
onto Vista effectively
defeating the new
anti-rootkit/anti-DRM
mechanism built into
Microsofts newest operating
system.
In an interview, Ionescu
confirmed his tool was
exploiting a vulnerability in
an ATI driver atidsmxx.sys,
version 3.0.502.0 to patch
the kernel to turn off certain
checks for signed drivers.
This meant that a malicious
rootkit author could
essentially piggyback on ATIs
legitimately signed driver to
tamper with the Vista
kernel.
winbeta.org -
10.08.2007Intel, Microsoft endorse HD
DVD
Intel and Microsoft
are combining their industry
power in an attempt to make
the HD DVD format the victor
in a battle over a standard to
succeed
DVD.
Typic
al DVDs today can hold 4.7GB
of information, but two
dueling camps are trying to
establish a larger-capacity
format that will allow for the
recording of high-definition
television and the backing up
of more data. HD DVD,
supported by a Toshiba-led
consortium, is up against
Blu-ray Disc, which is backed
by Sony and others, including
the two biggest
personal-computer
manufacturers, Dell and
Hewlett-Packard.
In
tel and Microsoft believe
weighing in on the HD DVD side
will be enough to tip the
balance. "We have a high
expectation of having a single
format, and that format is HD
DVD," said Intel spokesman
Bill Kircos...
winbeta.org -
28.09.2005ATi gets WHQL Certification
for Vista Display Drivers
Underlining the company's
leadership in developing
hardware and drivers to
support Microsoft Corp.'s
Windows Vista operating
system, ATI Technologies Inc.
today announced that its
driver has been granted the
graphics industry's first
Windows Hardware Quality Lab
(WHQL) certification for
Windows Vista by Microsoft.
WHQL certification sets a high
bar for quality and
reliability, and is considered
essential by many business and
home users.
Windows
Vista is the first version of
the Microsoft operating system
that requires hardware for 3D
acceleration. WHQL
certification reassures
businesses and consumers that
ATI graphics processors are
fully ready to unlock the
stunning graphical features of
the powerful Windows Vista
platform, including Windows
Vista Premium(1).
"ATI is working closely
with Microsoft to ensure the
best performance and most
reliable Vista experience
through our top-to-bottom line
of graphics processors," said
Ben Bar-Haim, vice president
of software, ATI Technologies
Inc. "With Windows Vista, 3D
graphics now matter to
everyone and ATI's WHQL
certification gives businesses
and consumers alike the
confidence that their ATI
system is ready for
Vista."
neowin.net -
27.09.2006Samsung Guilty of Memory Price
Fixing
Samsung has plead guilty to
charges of price fixing
computer memory and will pay a
$300 million fine to settle
the case, the U.S. Department
of Justice said late Thursday.
The decision revolves around
the company's actions from
1999 to 2002 to keep prices
artificially high...
betanews.com -
15.10.2005
