Vista

PDANet allows your laptop (or desktop) to go online wirelessly by connecting it to your Windows Mobile Phone through the sync cable, Bluetooth or even wifi. PdaNet goes through the unlimited data plan on your phone and does not require any extra service.

If you don't know what PDANet is, check it out here.

If you do, and have been looking for a 64-bit compatible version that works under Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64, go here.

This is a round-about workaround if you have a printer that doesn't have in-box support or an out-of-business/unsupported printer manufacturer.

If you have a printer that can 'talk' PCL and/or Postscript, try the HP Universal Print Driver Series for PCL 5, PCL 6 or PostScript.

If you have a LaserJet 4MV like I do with the default amount of RAM installed inside, you'll want to crank down the default amount of RAM available from 6MB to whatever the amount of RAM is available on your particular printer, if you want to be able to print complex PostScript documents.

If you perform an in-place upgrade of Vista x64 that has iTunes installed, or any program that takes advantage of the GEAR software driver, you will most likely run into this issue. Any CD-ROM or DVD-ROM will have a yellow exclamation point inside the Device Manager of Windows 7.

Thankfully, this is easily fixed without uninstalling or reinstalling iTunes. As of 02/04/09 (version 4.008.5), there is a Windows 7 compatible x86 and x64 GEAR ASPI driver available from Gear Software's download page.

I'm curious why vendors keep using this driver, because there are plenty of alternatives that provide the same functionality without all the headaches. Why not use the native APIs?

Don't leave home with them. Many OEMs are still shipping the older 10.x and 11.x revisions of this software, and are known to have bluescreen issues and other bugs that should be avoided.

You can easily install these drivers into Windows 7 by using the compatibility mode setting of "Vista" on the installation executables, or by simply pointing Device Manager to the directory you extract the archive to.

The amount of wireless chipsets supported by this driver pack is rather astounding:
Intel(R) WiMAX/WiFi Link 5350, Intel(R) WiMAX/WiFi Link 5150, Intel(R) WiFi Link 5300, Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100, Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN, Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AG_, Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection, Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection, Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection

You can read the release notes for this version here and download the binaries here.

There are also Intel Wired Drivers - version 13.5 - available from here.

Backup programs that use VSS (Volume Shadow Service) also tend to use the Virtual Disk Service to perform backups and restores. Is your Server 2008 based Backup Exec server leaking memory? You might want to investigate this hotfix due to memory leaks in the Virtual Disk Service (VDS) code.

A hotfix is available that addresses a memory leak in the Virtual Disk Service on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.

Scenario 1
A memory leak occurs in the Virtual Disk Service when an application uses the Virtual Disk Service to enumerate disk resources. In this scenario, you notice that the memory consumption of the Virtual Disk Service (Vds.exe) increases continually.

Scenario 2
The computer uses a Virtual Disk Service hardware provider to connect to a disk array. When an application uses the Virtual Disk Service to enumerate disk resources, a memory leaks occurs in the Virtual Disk Service and in the Virtual Disk Service hardware provider. In this scenario, you notice that the memory consumption of both the Virtual Disk Service and the Virtual Disk Service hardware provider increases continually.

The severity of this problem depends on how frequently your application calls the Virtual Disk Service. Sometimes, this problem may not cause significant issues. However, when the memory consumption becomes significant, the system may crash, or jobs may fail. This situation typically occurs when your production environment does not let you periodically restart the Virtual Disk Service.

If you are interested in the actual KB articles included in SP2, go to the TechNet page here.

This page is a work in progress, but contains some information on what has changed from SP1 to SP2 for Vista and Server 2008.

Hardware ecosystem support and enhancements:
Adds support for the 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) from VIA Technologies.

Integrates the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1 and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration.

Improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode.

Adds new capabilities to Direct X Graphic display reliability.

Includes updates to the RSS feeds sidebar with improved performance and responsiveness.

Improves audio and video performance for streaming high definition content.

Includes ability to record data to Blu-Ray media.

Operating system experience updates

Windows Search 4.0 builds on Microsoft’s search technology with improved indexing and search relevance. ce OneNote® 2007.

Improves Windows Media Center (WMC) in Content protection for TV.

Enterprise improvements

Provides the Hyper-V virtualization environment as a fully integrated feature of Windows Server 2008, including one free daughter OS with Windows Server 2008 Standard, four free licenses with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and an unlimited number of free licenses with Windows Server 2008 Datacenter.

Provides an improved power management policy that is up to 10% more efficient than the original in some configurations (both on the server and the desktop), and includes the ability to manage these settings via Group Policy.

Improves backwards compatibility for Terminal server license keys. Windows Server 2008 changed the licensing key from 512 bytes to 2,048 bytes which caused clients using older Terminal versions to fail. SP2 allows legacy license keys on Citrix applications to work with Windows Server 2008 Terminal server.

Setup and deployment improvements

The SP2 standalone installer:
Provides a single installer for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
Includes the ability to detect an incompatible driver and block service pack installation or warn users of any potential loss of functionality.
Provides better error handling and descriptive error messages where possible.
Improves manageability through logging in the system event log.
Provides a secure install experience.
Includes the ability to service the installer post release.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta apply to people, organizations, and technical enthusiasts who are comfortable evaluating prerelease software. This prerelease software is provided for testing only. Installation of Service Pack 2 Beta will result in Microsoft collecting information about the installation process, even if the installation is not completed. We do not recommend installing this software on primary or mission-critical systems. We recommend that you have a backup of your data before you install any prerelease software.

Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta - Five Language Standalone
Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta - Five Language Standalone for x64-based systems
Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta - Five Language Standalone DVD ISO
Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta - Windows Update Experience Kit

If you're curious what the registry key that the "Windows Update Experience Kit" adds, it is simply a REG_SZ of 93F7D954-DF91-22E6-99AB-4D8AF54E813A at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\VistaSP2\Beta1

Despite the warnings in the first paragraph above, this release works very well!

There is a handy registry setting that you can set, as long as you have XP SP2 or above, that will reset the error count once an I/O error recovers on the IDE chain. This is particularly handy for devices that like to get punted into PIO mode even though they are perfectly capable of doing DMA , 99.9% of the time. I need this for a dying hard drive that can perform DMA all day, as long as I don't go into the bad sector area where the head crashed in the past. If you're curious, this is also the same laptop that runs the ChickenCam, which is now viewable by clicking the "ChickenCam" link on the right side of the webpage.

The registry key for the IDE Primary Channel in question is a DWORD set to 1, at location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001\ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess

Depending on how many IDE channels your system has, you may need to increment the key by one for each channel.

For instance, the next channel would be listed under key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002\ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess

Read more about it here!

Hopefully, the ChickenCam will run marginally faster now. You can only torment a Pentium 2-333mhz chip so much with streaming video and routing packets.

The long running joke about instantly getting a performance boost inside Vista, especially when it is a guest VM, is to do net stop wsearch.

The next best thing you can do, besides limiting what folders are indexed, is to update your Windows Search to version 4.0. Most of the changes between the version included in Vista RTM, and 4.0, revolve around performance enhancements. It becomes especially noticeable on systems with limited I/O bandwidth (think laptops with 4200 rpm HDs).

However, this still isn't perfect. I've talked quite a bit with the Search team about this at the MVP Summit earlier in the year. There is a tweak I do on every system that runs Vista/Windows 7 or Server 2008 with the search/indexing engine enabled. I make sure to use Windows Search 4.0, for the performance improvements and the additional GPO/registry settings available.

The tweak? Disable the indexer backoff. You probably didn't realize you could even do this, but it is an available option that tells the indexing engine, "Don't worry about system activity - just index and get it over with already!". I'd much rather suffer with high CPU / I/O usage for a little while than a long and drawn out 'trickle' of activity that gives Vista a bad name.

This is particularly noticeable on a new install of Xobni when it indexes your Exchange mailbox and touches almost all your mailbox contents. With the indexer backoff enabled, which is the default on all operating systems, Outlook performance drags for a long time. With the indexer backoff disabled, the SearchIndexer.exe process will kick into high gear, finish and fall back asleep. Perfect.

How do you disable the indexer backoff?

For use in a group policy object (GPO):

Assuming you have the Windows Search 4.0 .ADM template added to your domain, or are on a Windows 7 system, look under Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Search. The setting to disable the indexer backoff is not surprisingly called Disable indexer backoff. By default, it is set to Not Configured but you will want to set this to Enabled.

For a non-domain joined computer, or a single PC, you can set this DWORD registry key:

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search\DisableBackoff with a value of 1.

You can download a pre-made .REG file here.

If this makes a difference for you, performance-wise, positive or negative, please let me know.

Buffer underflow in Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2 and SP3, Server 2003 SP1 and SP2, Vista Gold and SP1, and Server 2008 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a Server Message Block (SMB) request that contains a filename with a crafted length, aka "SMB Buffer Underflow Vulnerability."

It is unusual to see the amount of attention given to this update and the speed at which it was released, especially out-of-band.

Thankfully for Server 2008 and Vista, the attacker has to be an authenticated user, but Server 2003 and XP users are not so lucky.

Most firewalls already block RPC traffic from external sources, so that attack vector is somewhat mitigated, but what I am worried about is the possibility of a 0-day worm getting inside an organization and worming around the entire network due to internal/client firewall rules.

It is particularly interesting that they released an update for Windows 7 pre-beta, build 6801, which I believe is going to be the build version given out at the PDC.

If you are running the beta builds of the Forefront Stirling TMG that have the GAPA protection enabled, you are already protected at the firewall level from the exploit due to the updated definitions already released by Microsoft. You can sort of think of it like Snort signatures.

I haven't seen Active-eXploits out in the wild yet, but it is only a matter of time.

You can read the Homeland Security National Vulnerability Database report on it here.

You can read a more in-depth report from the Microsoft Security Vulnerability Research and Defense team on the update here.

Direct download links to the patch, per OS:
Win 2K SP4
Win XP x86 SP2/SP3 / x64 RTM/SP2
Win 2003 x86 SP1/SP2 / x64 RTM/SP2
Win Vista RTM/SP1 x86/x64
Win Server 2008 x86/x64

Other sites with additional information on the exploit:
SecurityFocus
FRSIRT
SecurityTracker
Secunia
XForce (1 of 2)
XForce (2 of 2)

Kicking and screaming (not really), I've been adding Media Center-esque devices to our household over time - mostly from Woot auctions because I don't want to put a lot of money into stuff like this, for now. I can say though, is that I'm very impressed with how the newer firmware on the Hava interfaces with Windows Media Center and how the well the Pinnacle PCTV 800e works, on a Thinkpad T60.

When I'm at home, I "drive it like I stole it" on my Dell 2707WFP monitor, and the ATI X1400 really shouldn't be able to keep up with the amount of HD scaling it has to do, but it does it surprisingly well. I'm curious to see how well it will behave on the newer models like the Thinkpad T500.

Long story short, there is a new cumulative update for Media Center that came out in October 2008:

Fixes an issue in which you cannot seek through recorded TV shows on Windows Media Center systems that have digital cable tuners. Additionally, the recorded TV shows display the incorrect length.

Fixes an issue in which Windows Media Center Extenders cannot reconnect to a host computer after the host computer resumes from the suspend mode or the sleep mode.

Fixes an issue which is introduced by in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 950126. In this issue, a video that is paused may resume if you minimize or maximize the Windows Media Center window or if a screen saver starts.

Implements support for Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free copy for digital cable tuners that have the latest digital cable tuner BIOS versions that support DRM-free copy.

Expands the solution that was introduced in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 950126 to improve the experience of recording analog TV broadcasts to include set-top box scenarios. Previously, some analog TV broadcasts were blocked with the "protected content" message.

Note: This solution does not apply to configurations that use analog TV over digital cable tuners because the BIOS of the digital cable tuners provide content protection.

KB 955519 - you can read about it here and download the binaries here (x86/x64).

This might improve behavior of the Cisco VPN client under Vista/Server 2008. It is too bad they are not providing a 64-bit client for their IPSec VPN.

SYMPTOMS
You use a Windows Vista-based or Windows Server 2008-based computer that is behind a Network Address Translation (NAT) device. When you use this computer to try to communicate with another computer through an Internet Protocol security (IPsec) tunnel-mode connection, the connection fails.

CAUSE
This issue may occur if more than one computer shares the same source port. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 do not support tunnel-mode connections when the computer is behind an NAT device. Therefore, a conflict may occur.

RESOLUTION
A hotfix is available to resolve this issue. This hotfix adds the support for IPsec when the computer is behind a NAT device.

You can read more about it here and request the binaries here.

As mentioned here, they are not trying to come up with a clever name for the version after Vista. Some people are complaining already about naming an OS around a version number but... OS X? Hello? OS 10.

I've also seen complaints that the kernel is reporting 6.1. This is by design, and it is due to the amount of programs that will downright break if a major version number incremented.

I'm glad they are moving away from year based names, too.

Transcript from the 9/24/2008 Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable, "Under the Hood: Windows Vista Performance...Need Answers?" hosted by Mark Russinovich. From boot times and applets to common "misconfigurations" and how to fix them. Mark and a panel of customer IT pros and subject matter experts discuss how to optimize Windows Vista and what IT pros can do to improve overall system performance.

I helped out on this webcast in Redmond and answered many questions behind the scenes during the actual event. Transcripts are now available for download of the RoundTable.

If you want to see a replay of the video/event, go to this Technet page here, or enter this address into your Windows Media Player or any other player than can handle mms:// links with streaming .WMV content.