Vista on Anything About IT

Windows Vista Application Compatibility List

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:35:56 +0000

Is your application vista compatible ? The Windows Vista Application Compatibility List for IT professionals might give you the answer. The list contains all applications that have the status “Certified for Windows Vista” or “Works with Windows Vista”.

This list might be helpful as well in planning for Windows7, since “most” applications that work for Windows Vista are supposed to work on Windows7 as well.

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 cleanup

Thu, 07 May 2009 07:08:04 +0000

Note that once you have installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 you can run the compcln.exe utility to make your installation permanent and remove any sources from the previous state.

After you have executed compcln.exe, you will notice that you get some free disk space back.

Windows Services, What changed from Vista to Windows7 - Part2

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:45:18 +0000

In part one of “Windows Services, What changed from Vista to Windows7” I highlighted the new, renamed and removed services that come with Windows7.

Some Services are not quite new, but are now just installed by default. One example is the ActiveX Installer Service.

The below table lists those Services where the startup mode was changed from Automatic (Vista) to manual (Win7).

Note that the “Status” for some Services on your system might be different. The list was produced right after having installed both the Windows Vista and Windows7 client within Hyper-V guest machines.

Windows Services, what changed from Vista to Windows7 Part1

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:34:52 +0000

Today I took a closer look at the Windows Services running on Windows7. A lot of the performance improvements with Windows7 are related to the way how and when services are being loaded so i thought it’s worth to see what’s happening there.

I first installed a Windows 7 build 7077 and a Windows Vista SP1 client on my Hyper-V server. Because I am primarily interested in what’s happening in an enterprise environment, both clients were joined to a domain.

Shutting down or Reboot Vista when remotely connected

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:10:21 +0000

When you are logged on to a Vista Client through a remote desktop connection, you don’t see the option to shutdown or reboot the system within the Start Menu.

But if you are within the remote session and press CTRL+ALT+END you get the following screen

allowing you to Restart, shutdown or putting into sleep the system.

Another option is to enter the shutdown command at command prompt like shutdown /s that will shutdown the system.

Where has the Vista snipping tool gone ?

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:39:13 +0000

Today when I wanted to make a screen shot on one of my development systems I noticed that the snipping tool was gone. The snipping tool comes with the Vista operating system, so my thirst though was that something must have screwed up my system making the snipping tool disappear. But then i remembered that recently I had removed the Tablet PC Optional components from that desktop, thinking that I would not need that feature on a desktop PC.

Windows7 overview from Mark Minasi

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:34:58 +0000

Mark Minasi has put together a nice overview on Windows7. “the next Windows: Lucky7?”

Reducing the Windows Vista Footprint

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:47:56 +0000

The Windows Vista footprint is quite large, so my current thoughts are “how to reduce the Windows Vista footprint ?”. I hope to come up with a complete overview at some stage, for now i have found the following interesting references:

Uninstalling Drivers and Devices in Windows Vista a Microsoft white paper primarily intended for driver developers, but why not use the same methods described in there and reduce the driver store size ?

Vista SP1 download using BITSADMIN

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:57:52 +0000

I wrote about BITSADMIN earlier, use the below command line to directly download Vista SP1. Note that you have to create the c;\download folder yourself or define an other path.

BITSADMIN /TRANSFER VSP1 http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/a/9/3a9b72c2-527d-4694-8a49-84c056d4c34d/Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe C:\DOWNLOAD\Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe

Vista SP1 cleanup tool VSP1CLN.EXE

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:24:20 +0000

If you have installed Windows Vista SP1 on top of your first Vista installation and have no plans to uninstall it, you might want to give the following command a try “VSP1CLN.exe”.

The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Files Removal Tool (VSP1CLN.exe) can be used to remove the files that are archived after Windows Vista SP1 is applied. Running this tool is optional.

Installing Windows Vista SP1 increases the amount of disk space that is used by the operating system. This space is used to archive files so that SP1 can be uninstalled. Typically, you should run VSP1CLN.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1.

News about Vista SP2

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:56:40 +0000

Until last week we have just seen rumours around the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista. The only visible thing from Microsoft was a placeholder KB number on their Support page.

On October 24, Microsoft has droppped some more information on their Windows Vista blog about the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.

Don't skip Vista

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:25:55 +0000

While most people again seem to get excited about Microsoft’s next operating system and waste their time with rumours and guessing when it will be released, let me continue with promoting not to skip Vista :-)

An interesting article about “Five Reasons Why Skipping Windows Vista Could Backfire” was posted yesterday on www.cio.com

I found the arguments good enough to mention this article here.

Getting annoyed by the rumors

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:35:26 +0000

Instead of manually searching the web, i have created some Google Alerts. This is very useful as it does simply send me an e-mail every day with the found results.

Of course like many others i’m also interested about what is going on around Windows 7, but to be honest, i really am not interested on how “Paint” will look.

What annoys me most is all the rumors going around about the possible release date for Windows 7, first we heard 2010, then some argue 2009, but today i even see messages speaking about Summer 2009 and of course Microsoft is not commenting on any of those messages.

GP Preferences

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:58:36 +0000

In 2006 Microsoft acquired the company DesktopStandard known for its extending Group Policy products GPVault and PolicyMaker.

While GPVault has become part of Microsofts MDOP suite that is available only for Enterprise customers that have a Software Assurance contract, the Policy Maker features have been available to everyone.

The PolicyMaker GPO extensions are now called GP Preferences.

GPO Preferences can be managed directly from a Windows 2008 system that has the latest GPMC installed or through a Windows Vista client with RSAT installed. With GP Preferences you can now manage Windows 2008 server, Windows Vista, Server 2003 SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:48:01 +0000

Microsoft has published a Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide focusing on the following:

Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you use it.
Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
Making configuration changes that help a computer to start faster.
Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop problems before they get too big.

Reading - Administering Windows Vista Security

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:03:32 +0000

Although you usually don’t read IT related books from page 1 and end it on the last page, I consider having finished reading Mark Minasis’ Administering Windows Vista Security - The Big surprises.

While many IT books can end up being a bit annoying, i found this one very nice to read as it does include the authors own opinion and practical experiences and it does real fluently.

The book gives you a good insight into Vista’s UAC, File and Registry virtualization and other security related topics.

Automating Regional settings configuration for Vista

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:24:34 +0000

In my earlier post “Automating Regional Settings configuration” I described how to script the Regional Options settings for Windows XP using a rundll command.

For Windows Vista there is a similar trick using the following command:

 control intl.cpl,, /f:“filename.xml”

Details on how to populate the filename.xml are documented on Microsoft Technet - Guide to Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface.