Vista

The unfortunate constraints of the 32-bit x86 architecture are (mostly) to blame for this one. If you want to get technical, blame the architecture and MMIO mapped devices hogging up the address space. If you want the official and much more technical answer, check out this KB article here.

Sadly, I hope issues like this push 64-bit driver writers to get busy, because I'd really like to see more 64-bit OS adoption. The #1 stumbling block I keep running into with 64-bit Windows is drivers or lack of.

More Vista power management hot fixes, this time related to the AHCI (native SATA) driver.

Thankfully, as per the KB, "The increased power consumption is small and may not be noticeable to a typical user."

A non-scientific observation: My Thinkpad laptop hard drive does not Device-Initiated Link Power Management (DIPM) and I do notice a difference in battery life after the hotfix has been installed. This contradicts what I originally posted on 02-21-07.

Read more about it here.

Update: This is now available for public download off of Lenovo's website in the Driver section as of 03-05-07. I would link to it directly but that doesn't seem to work properly without a valid HTTP referrer field.

Another release snuck past my radar this weekend - the final version of the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool. You can install this on a PC that is attached to your network and with the proper rights/access, you can scan all the PCs on your network and whether or not they are Vista capable or not.

You can download the tool here

Roxio Creator Suite 9 is Vista compatible.
Roxio Creator Suite 7.5 is not (as far as I know).

If you install KB 929427, Roxio Creator Suite 9 will no longer work.
Solution, in the short term: Avoid KB 929427 for now if you have Roxio Creator Suite 9 installed.

I'd recommend using Nero Burning Rom anyway.

Assume in this example that the username is 'atiensivu', the domain is 'staff', and the user profile is located in %systemdrive%\users\atiensivu. %systemdrive% is typically C: on standard Vista installs. Replace every instance 'atiensivu' with the username of the corrupt profile.

1. If you can log into the profile, make note of the %USERPROFILE% environment variable value. Most likely it will be 'C:\Users\atiensivu' or 'C:\Users\atiensivu.staff'. Logoff.

2. If you have logged in with the profile at any point since your last reboot or you suspect there are files in use within the profile, reboot. The important part is to make sure there are no open files within the broken profile directory.

3. Login as administrator or another account with local admin rights.

4. Run 'takeown /r /a /d y /f %systemdrive%\users\atiensivu'.

5. From %systemdrive%\users, rename 'atiensivu' to 'atiensivu.old'.

6. Within %systemdrive%\users, create a directory called 'atiensivu'.

7. Run 'takeown /r /u staff\atiensivu /f %systemdrive%\users\atiensivu'.

8. Run regedit and go to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList and delete the SID key for the corrupt profile. Easiest way to find the correct SID is to search from the 'ProfileList' key for the directory mentioned in %USERPROFILE% in step #1.

9. Logoff.

10. Log into the 'atiensivu' account. A new profile should be created. Copy over any files you might want from the old profile directory.

The 'takeown' commands might be overkill but I don't like getting permission errors.

*Publically available* (no need to call PSS):

KB 925528 - Reliability update for the USB stack in Windows Vista

KB 930163 - In Windows Vista, you cannot access any resources on a remote VPN server after you switch a network connection from one network adapter to another network adapter and then dial a VPN connection

KB 929777 - Error message when you try to install Windows Vista on a computer that uses more than 3 GB of RAM: "STOP 0x0000000A"

KB 929763 - Version 5.00 of the Mongolian Baiti font may be displayed incorrectly in Windows Vista

KB 929762 - You receive a Stop 0x9F error when you wake a Windows Vista-based computer that is connected to an IEEE 1394-based device

KB 929761 - When you run Wusa.exe together with the /quiet option to try to install certain software packages on a Windows Vista-based computer, the installation fails

KB 929685 - A high definition audio device may no longer work after you resume Windows Vista from sleep or from hibernation and then restart the computer

*Non-public fixes* (most seem to be power related):

KB 930570 - Error message in the Usbhub.sys process when you wake a Windows Vista-based computer from sleep or from hibernation: "STOP 0x00000044"

KB 929577 - A Bluetooth device may no longer work correctly when you wake a Windows Vista-based computer from sleep

KB 929734 - You may experience problems after you resume a Windows Vista-based computer from sleep or from hibernation

KB 928135 - A Windows Vista-based computer stops responding when you resume the computer from hibernation

KB 925255 - Power consumption increases when you run a WPF-based program that runs an animation in Windows Vista

KB 928253 - SATA optical drives are not available after you start a Windows Vista-based computer

KB 930194 - A computer uses an SiI PATA chip does not recognize an attached optical drive as a drive that supports recording after you install Windows Vista

It isn't straightforward but give this a try here.

The TinyURL version is http://tinyurl.com/2lb6t3.

There looks like there are some nice hibernation and sleep hotfixes I will be investigating.

I am hoping a non-beta VPN client is released soon because there are a lot of Cisco VPNs out there!

Partial changelog for the VPN client:

Resolved:

Can't enable the VA sometimes
Client produces one-way traffic with skype and AES encryption
Windows AES encrypt crashes .NET hash table application

Known Issues:

Installer does not detect USB adapter
Stateful firewall does not start
VPN Client should not install Zone Lab Firewall on Vista platform
Stateful Firewall Not Supported on Vista VPN Client
VPN Client does not support Start Before Logon
Unable to install client under UAC (Workaround: Run setup from vpnclient_setup.exe)
Uninstall warns that VPN Service still running
Default tunnel route removed due to DHCP renewal
No logging on vista build 5270
Importing PCF causes data redir resulting in corrupt PCF
Default tunnel route removed due to DHCP renewal

Not all USB thumbdrives are created equal and I've noticed that some places are having 'fire sales' on known slow USB thumbdrives now that Vista has launched. One thing I can recommend is getting a thumbdrive that is large enough to move your profile onto and use for ReadyBoost. You could also go one step further by moving your user TMP and TEMP environment variables to your thumbdrive.

Pros:
Faster program launches
Less chance of profile corruption because it is solid state technology
Less hard drive fragmentation, due to temp files offloaded to another drive
Less power consumption on laptop, due to less hard drive head seeks

Cons:
If you forget your thumbdrive, you will be forced to log onto a temporary profile on your hard drive.
If you unplug the thumbdrive before properly logging off, you might end up with a very upset OS.
Premature 'wear-out' of the thumbdrive. Typically by the time you get bad sectors on flash memory, you have already retired the device.
Local profile size is limited by the size of the thumbdrive. This is normally not a problem unless you have a bad habit of saving downloads and files to your desktop. I used to be guilty as charged until I changed my ways.

So far, the pros have outweighed the cons and I'm enjoying the experience so far. I will document the process later this month, hopefully.

By default, Compound TCP is disabled on Vista, but enabled on Longhorn server, unless this changes before Longhorn server ships.
CTCP is a technology that came out of the Microsoft Research group as a way to deal with connections that have a large bandwidth-delay product.
A good example of this kind of connection would be satellite internet (DirectPC / Starband) or wireless technology like EVDO or WiMax.

To enable CTCP on Vista, run 'netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp'.
To disable CTCP on Vista, run 'netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=none'.

If you are going to use CTCP on a lossy connection that might have packets come back out of order, you might also want to enable RFC 1323 timestamps, unless you are on a very low bandwidth connection. You can do that by running 'netsh interface tcp set global timestamps=enabled'.

For a list of the global TCP settings under Vista (and Longhorn), launch a command prompt and then run 'netsh interface tcp show global'.

You could almost think of the tunable settings in 'netsh interface tcp' much like the tunable settings under /proc/net/ipv4 in Linux.

A good writeup on CTCP can be found here.

Information about the new TCP/IP stack in Vista/Longhorn can be found here.

For a real world example, with CTCP enabled, I can saturate a cellphone data connection (1xRTT or EVDO) and have smoother performance overall. I suspect I'd notice a bigger change if the connection was EVDO Rev A compared to EVDO Rev 0.