Durante mañana Martes, Microsoft planea lanzar parches para sus Sistemas Operativos XP SP3 y Vista SP1, los parches serán críticos, por lo que si tenéis las actualizaciones a modo manual recomiendo que permanezcais atentos.

If you’re an IT professional and currently using Microsoft’s Service Pack Blocker, the software giant recently announced that the current blocks for Vista SP1 and XP SP3 are going to expire in a few months.The Service Pack Blocker Tool only temporarily prevents Windows from the installation of a Service Pack via Windows Update, and the block is only effective for one year after the Service pack is released to the market via Windows Update.

Effective April 28th, 2009, Windows Vista SP1 will no longer be blocked by the tool and will be delivered via Windows Update. The same goes for Windows XP SP3, but the block will be lifted on May 19th, 2009.

These dates correspond with the official release and distribution of the Service Packs through Windows Update. Microsoft Windows Communications Manager, Brandon LeBlanc, also released a QnA for users who are concerned about the announcement:

Q: What does this mean if my company has the tool in place?

A: Enterprises currently using the service pack blocker tool for either Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP3 will be prompted to install Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP3 as appropriate. Microsoft recognizes the need for IT pros to have this type of information in advance and wants to provide them with an early heads-up to ensure they’re prepared to deploy the appropriate service pack(s) when the blockers expire.

Q: Is there a separate blocker tool available if we don’t want to deploy Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP3?

A: No. Microsoft strongly recommends all customers move to Windows Vista SP1 if they are running Windows Vista or Windows XP SP3 if they are running Windows XP. Our goal in announcing the removal of the blockers early is to provide you with an early notification to ensure you’re prepared to deploy the appropriate service pack when the blockers expire.

Q: Does this mean we have to download Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP3?

A: No. Service packs will not automatically install on a machine even after the Service Pack Blocker tool expires. For service packs, you must accept the offering before installation will start. If Automatic Update is turned on, WU will alert you that it has an important update to install. If you don’t want to install the update (service pack), simply decline to install and/or hide the update. If you do not have AU turned on, the service pack will not be offered until you open Windows Update and “Check for Updates.”

Q: Does this signify the end of support for Windows Vista and/ or Windows XP SP2?

A: No. For more information on Windows product support lifecycles, please visit the following site:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifecycle#ServicePackSupport

I just upgraded my Vista 64 BIT laptop to Windows 7. So far it looks good. I am very interested to see how the performance is compared to vista itself.

Aangezien iedereen vol lof is over de recent gelekte Windows 7 versie (build 7000), begint het benchmarks te regenen op het internet.

Zo zien we dat Windows 7 maar liefst 11 seconden sneller opstart dan Windows Vista SP1. Bij de PassMark Performance test haalt Windows 7 een score van 1007.5, daar waar Vista SP1 amper een score van 986.6 haalt.

Bij de PCMark Vantage test komen er grote verschillen naar boven. Hier haalt Windows 7 namelijk een score van 5233 en Vista SP1 haalt hierbij maar 4762. Echter laat Vista SP1 Windows 7 ver achter op Cinebench R10.

Als we kijken naar een vergelijking tussen Windows XP en Windows 7, blijkt Windows 7 een geduchte concurrent te zijn.

Hieruit kunnen we concluderen dat Microsoft rekening heeft gehouden met de klachten die er zijn gekomen op Vista. Het feit dat de beta van Windows 7 al heel stabiel is belooft veel goeds voor de toekomst.

Voor meer informatie verwijs ik door naar xtreview.com en zdnet.com

Last week I formatted my hard disk and installed Vista along with the new Ubuntu 8.10

Here are the screenshots of my Ubuntu and Vista… I have always liked the blue background which comes from MAC OSX.

Well I first installed the Vista since if i would have installed the latter after installing Ubuntu i would have lost my GRUB boot loader. The installation of Vista was quite fast and simple… However after restarting my PC on Vista i looked at the memory consumption and damn… Just a plain Vista takes 512MB to run… I had not installed anything yet… LOL…

Now on to the Ubuntu installation…

Well that took quite some time maybe because of the CD. The installation procedures of Ubuntu are not as simple as Vista… Well after the installation i did some fine tuning of my ubuntu since i do not really like the default theme… What’s really cool in ubuntu is when u enable the desktop effects… that needs the nVidia Driver to be enabled.

I logged back on to the Vista and installed the basic softwares needed… With the antivirus and all.. Note that in ubuntu i do not have to install any antivirus

Well Vista is really nice to use… it’s beautiful… but while using for some time it crashes with physical memory dump… maybe it’s because of my PC Specs?

I got a 2 GB of RAM, Pentium 4 2.8 HT Processor, 512 MB Graphic Card…

With Ubuntu i got really no great problem till now Ubuntu is a lot simple than Vista but it’s great to work with… Well just got a small problem to change the icons that i download from Gnome-look.org, When i apply the downloaded icon themes, the folder icons change to the default Gnome Icon…. The other Icons change but the Folders do not… If anyone could help please

I use Vista mostly for chatting on MSN and “playing games” though i do not get the time anymore…. I installed Vista on a 20 GB partition and u can say i did not install anything in that partition apart from some drivers and Skype which goes to drive C:/ by default… only 6GB left out of 20GB lol…

I have installed Ubuntu on another 20GB partition and got ample of space left (around 14GB which is enough for me to work on Ubuntu)

Got a separate partition to store my huge files… Still i think i need to buy a 250GB hard disk… lol…

Since i am more in favour of using freewares and open-source, i have installed IZArc instead of WinZip or WinRAR. And Installed CDBurnerXP instead of Nero Both are good to use…

I have decided to base all my works on Ubuntu… It’s really worth giving it a try…

Now waiting to try a MAC OS… hihihi

Siccome l’aggiornamento al service pack lascia sempre un bel po’ di files di backup (per fortuna, altrimenti se l’aggiornamento non andasse a buon fine…) esiste un comando per rimuovere i vecchi files di backup e integrare completamente l’SP1 nel sistema! Andremo quindi a rimuovere circa 800MB di spazio, MA non sarà più possibile disinstallare l’aggiornamento.

Come tutte le cose più funzionali, si fanno da linea di comando, quindi:

start–>tutti i programmi–>accessori

Clic col tasto destro del mouse sy Prompt dei comandi e nel menù contestuale cliccare su “Esegui come amministratore”

Inserire il comando:

vsp1cln.exe /verbose

e premere INVIO.

Confermate l’operazione e dopo qualche minuto vi verrà confermata la puliza!

Tuy có cải thiện hiệu năng đáng kể cho Windows Vista song bản SP1 mà Microsoft trình làng gần đây vẫn còn một số rắc rối quanh việc loại bỏ giới hạn kết nối Internet trong hệ thống, mà cụ thể là việc nâng cấp file Tcpip.sys. Việc nâng cấp này đã gây ra một số bất ổn như không thể kết nối Internet, hiện tượng màn hình xanh…

Một lập trình viên người Trung Quốc đã phát triển một file hệ thống tương tự Tcpip.sys với tên gọi CrackTcpip.sys nhằm mục đích hạn chế những lỗi mà Tcpip.sys gây ra.

CrakTcpip.sys hoạt động hoàn toàn độc lập với Tcpip.sys, nhưng sau khi được kích hoạt, nó sẽ tăng số lượng kết nối cũng như tăng tốc độ download, upload cho Windows Vista SP1 gấp nhiều lần, nhất là trong mạng P2P và BiTorrent. Trong một số trường hợp, CrackTcpip.sys còn khắc phục lỗi trình duyệt không mở được trang web.

Download, cài đặt và thiết lập

Bạn tải file CrackTcpip.sys cho Windows Vista SP1 RC v.668 tại http://windowsvn.net/url/CTcpipv668/ hoặc cho Windows Vista SP1 RC v.774 tại http://windowsvn.net/url/CTcpipv744/.

Sau khi giải nén, bạn được năm file: Install.reg, TestInstall.reg, Uninstall.reg, CrackTcpip.sys và TestRun.bat. Đầu tiên, bạn cần kiểm tra sự tương thích của CrackTcpip.sys với hệ thống bằng cách copy file CrackTcpip.sys vào thư mục Drives theo đường dẫn C:\Windows\System32\drives, sau đó bấm đôi vào file TestInstall.reg, chọn Yes > Ok rồi khởi động lại máy.

Sau khi đăng nhập vào Windows, bạn chạy file TestRun.bat với quyền Admin. Nếu không có sự cố gì xảy ra, bạn tiếp tục chạy file Install.reg và sau đó chạy file TestRun.bat là hoàn tất.

Để gỡ bỏ CrackTcpip.sys, bạn chạy file uninstall.reg, khởi động lại máy, rồi xóa file CrackTcpip.sys trong thư mục C:\Windows\System32\drives.

Lưu ý: Trước khi tiến hành cài đặt CrackTcpip.sys, bạn nên sao lưu hệ thống để phòng trường hợp CrackTcpip.sys gây ra lỗi.

Situation-one

Microsoft’s decision to have both Windows XP and Windows Vista available concomitantly on the market was a move that inherently backfired against the company. Comparisons involving the two Windows operating system versions favored Vista very little, being, quite to the contrary, beneficial for XP instead. However, this scenario is valid for XP SP2 and Vista RTM. With the advent of SP1 for Vista and SP3 for XP the situation has evolved. First of all, the barrage of criticism targeted at the latest version of the Windows client has toned down. And with SP1 softening all the rough corners of Vista, its adoption is well above that of Windows XP SP3.

According to statistics made available by Devil Mountain Software, Vista SP1 adoption at the end of July 2008 hit a high of 86%. But even as early as April the uptake rate was 69%, at just one month after Microsoft permitted access to the gold bits of SP1, which was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008.

“There was tremendous pent-up demand for Vista SP1, either due to customer dissatisfaction with the product or because users were convinced of its benefits from all of the media hype surrounding its release. No similar demand existed for Windows XP Service Pack 3, most likely because, overall, the majority of users are quite happy with Windows XP + Service Pack 2 (we found just a handful of users still running Service Pack 1),” a Devil Mountain Software representative revealed.

As far as XP SP3 is concerned, estimates put the adoption rate of the service pack at just 34% in April. This number is unsurprising, as only in April 2008 did Microsoft finally manage to produce the final version of XP SP3. However, by the end of July, only 47% of all XP users had deployed the third and final service pack for Vista’s precursor.

“What seems clear from these numbers is that Microsoft’s customers felt Windows Vista was in urgent need of a Service Pack 12-18 months after it was released, while those still using Windows XP were relatively happy with the platform and in no rush to patch it,” the Devil Mountain Software researcher added.

Dear readers what do you think of it? Feel free to drop your valuable comments.

[Via: Softpedia News]

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) – Bản cập nhật quan trọng cho Windows Vista. Bản cập nhật khá quan trọng giúp các tiến trình sao chép, tắt máy và sự tương thích với các phần mềm, phần cứng được cải thiện rất nhiều.

SP1 tiếp tục cung cấp cho người dùng, nhà quản trị mạng sự tiện lợi và dễ dàng để quản lí Windows Vista, bản cập nhật 5 ngôn ngữ lần này hỗ trợ: English (US), French, German, Japanese, Spanish (Traditional).

Gói nâng cấp đầu tiên cho hệ điều hành mới của Microsoft chứa nhiều bản vá lỗi cùng những cải tiến về hiệu suất hoạt động. Service Pack 1 được phân phối qua hệ thống Windows Update với dung lượng 68 MB và tải khá nhanh.

Quá trình update tự động thông qua Windown Update của hệ thống hoặc người dùng có thể tải ở các link sau:

Tải về và cài đặt gói 5 ngôn ngữ Vista SP1 (434.5MB):
http://windowsvn.net/url/vistasp1/

Hoặc:

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 32 Bit:http://windowsvn.net/url/vistasp132b/

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 64 Bit:
http://windowsvn.net/url/vistasp164b/

I have known about this issue for a while and as of yet I haven’t found a good solution (though, admittedly, I am yet to look for one!) and the reason as to why I’m posting this now is that I know I’m not alone in having this problem — I got two hits from someone searching “no sound macbook pro vista ultimate 2008″

The problem occurs randomly, but I’m pretty sure that I see it more after my MacBook Pro has resumed from sleep in Vista (Ultimate 64 bit).

The problem is that no sound will play out of the speakers even though the system is unmuted and should be playing sounds!

The only way I have found to get around this is to insert some headphones/speakers into the headphone jack and then remove them. This always restores the sound for me….. But, I will get on to finding out if there is a better solution than this and I’ll update this post if I find anything.

Does this work for you? Or have you found some other way to restore sound? If you have found another way, please comment.

Sono già passati un paio di mesi, da quando Microsoft ha rilasciato l’attesissimo Service Pack 1 per Vista, seguito a ruota dal Service Pack 3 di XP, che sanciva la chiusura del suo ciclo da O.S ufficiale (ricordo che il supporto aggiornamenti durerà fino al 2014).

Ebbene, girovagando per il Web o dando un’occhiata ai Pc dei miei amici, sono venuto a scoprire che ben pochi hanno installato i Service Pack sul loro sistema! Male, male, male!

Molti sottovalutano l’importanza dei SP, considerandoli soltanto un pacchetto di aggiornamenti rilasciati già precendentemente su Windows Update; Per cui un utente che ha sempre aggiornato il pc con gli ultimi update, magari si sente sicuro e pensa di non necessitare del Service Pack. Niente di più sbagliato!

Il SP, è si anche questo, ma non solo! Esso contiente anche molti miglioramenti a livello di kernel (cuore del sistema), di velocità e affidabilità di sistema, a volte anche molto visibili!

Come esempio possiamo prendere Vista, che all’inizio era mooooolto lento nella copia dei files persino da cartella a cartella (pensate che per un mp3 di 7Mb, poteva metterci anche 10-15 secondi!); ebbene, dopo il Service Pack 1 la velocità generale è davvero migliorata, così come la stabilità (la compatibilità non ne sono sicuro poichè tutti i programmi che possiedo funzionano, altri non ne ho idea).

Paradossalmente, persino i programmi o i giochi scritti per Windows 95 a me funzionano a meraviglia, mentre ho sentito che alcuni giochi di 3-4 anni fa hanno problemi a funzionare….boh..mistero..

Anche in Windows XP le novità non sono poche, magari meno vistose, ma comunque sempre inerenti alla velocità e stabilità del sistema operativo.

Ora vi elencherò in gergo meno tecnico quali miglioramenti hanno introdotto questi 2 Service Pack:

WINDOWS VISTA SP1:

• Aggiornamenti minori già rilasciati tramite Windows Update
• Aggiornamento al Kernel (il “cuore”) di Windows, rendendolo molto simile a Windows Server 2008, noto per la grande stabilità e sicurezza in rete.
• La tecnologia “PatchGuard” è stata modificata, permettendo agli antivirus di interagire con il sistema operativo in modo più efficiente
• Prestazioni molto migliorate nella copia ed esecuzione dei programmi
• Modificato il Windows Genuine Advantage: Le copie di Windows riconosciute come Pirata, non vengono disattivate, ma continuano a funzionare (seppur in modalità “copia da attivare” mantiene tutte le funzionalità originali)
• Migliorata la compatibilità con molti programmi e aggiunta di altri (circa 80.000 periferiche compatibili al momento del rilascio del SP1)
• Migliorata la stabilità generale del sistema

WINDOWS XP SP3:

• Migliore stabilità e affidabilità, rendendolo di fatto uno dei S.O. più stabili in commercio
• Il codice seriale per l’attivazione non viene più richiesto
• Le prestazioni aumentano di circa il 15%
• Viene installato Windows Installer 3.1, componente essenziale per le nuove installazioni del programmi, già presente in Vista
• Attivato il supporto per il WPA2, avanzato sistema di criptaggio dei dati di una connessione Wireless
• Aggiunto il supporto NAP, aumentando ulteriormente la sicurezza dei computer in rete
• Aggiunto un potente sistema crittografico dei dati presenti nel pc

Come potete notare, le novità non mancano da entrambi i sistemi.

Chi non ha un Pc abbastanza performante per utilizzare Vista, potrà comunque utilizzare XP, ora ancora più veloce e sicuro.

Quindi fate attenzione, poichè i SP sono davvero molto importanti per la sicurezza e la durata vitale di un sistema operativo.
LINK per scaricare il SERVICE PACK 3 per Windows XP (sito ufficiale Microsoft)

LINK per scaricare il SERVICE PACK 1 Per Windows Vista (Sito ufficiale Microsoft)

I have fallen sick and have been at home for the past week or so. I took this opportunity to remove Windows Vista Home Premium that came with my laptop. I was thinking about this for sometime now and the only thing that was stopping me was time.

Now that I had the time, I removed Vista and made Ubuntu my primary Operating System. In the process I have freed close to 50GB of disk space 15 GB on which Vista was installed and the remaining which it did not allow me to move to a different partition.

Please note that this is a decision after about one year of using my laptop. I was able to do all that I wanted to do on Ubuntu. I found that I logged into Vista only to update it. And more recently stopped the updates as well. Even after SP1 Vista was not that great. Yes, it was usable though.

So I have decided to try out different flavors of Linux on a different partition. I will retain Ubuntu as my primary OS until the time where it behaves so badly so as to get kicked out. I am currently trying out OpenSUSE 11 KDE 4 and my once upon a time sweet heart – Mandriva Linux One Spring 2008 KDE. I am also planning to try the GNOME version of Mandriva.