Microsoft offers a simple online tool to help evaluate the functionality of routers.

The Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool checks your Internet router to see if it supports certain technologies. You can use this tool on a PC running either the Windows Vista or Windows XP operating system. If you're planning to run Windows Vista, this tool can verify whether your existing Internet router supports advanced features, such as improved download speeds and face-to-face collaboration using Windows Meeting Space.

The tool is intended to be run from a home network behind a home Internet (NAT) router. Running this tool from behind a corporate firewall or on operating systems other than those specified above won't produce accurate results. This tool requires administrator privileges to run.

The tests can require up to 10 minutes to complete and do not make any permanent changes to your router. For the most accurate results, your computer should be connected directly to your Internet router, using a wired connection.

Note Although it is unlikely, testing might interrupt your Internet connectivity or cause your router to stop responding. If you require uninterrupted Internet access at this time (for example, if you are in the middle of downloading a large file, bidding on a time-sensitive Internet auction, or playing an online game), you should wait and do this testing at another time

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/using/tools/igd/default.mspx

http://blogs.technet.com/rp/archive/2009/02/21/internet-connectivity-evaluation-tool.aspx

Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Beta as a Free Download

Microsoft's excitable CEO Steve Ballmer showed off Windows 7 the slick, fast, user-friendly successor to the much-maligned Windows Vista and said it will be available as a public beta on Friday.

Unveiled by an intense Ballmer during his keynote address on the eve of CES 2009, Windows 7 will offer better performance on underpowered machines such as netbooks, support for multitouch interfaces, and simplified home networking.

Ballmer said that this would be the "best version of Windows ever" and pointed out features that implicitly acknowledged the problems with Windows Vista.

"We are putting in all the right ingredients simplicity, reliability and speed and working hard to get it right and to get it ready," said Ballmer.

Read more at Wired

ctfmon.exe and how to disable it in Windows XP and Vista

If you’re like me, you probably like your computer to run as fast and efficiently as possible. One of the main ways to do this is to stop any unwanted processes from working behind the scenes and eating up your system’s resources. Most likely you have already gone through Windows Task Manager to stop unneeded processes, but what about that pesky "ctfmon.exe" that never seems to go away.

According to Microsoft, Ctfmon is the process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar. It’s how you can control the computer via speech or a pen tablet, or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for Asian languages. In other words, 90% of Windows users will never need nor want the addition, so how do you go about disabling it for good?

Here’s how to get rid of it on Windows XP:

Go to your control panel and open up "Regional and Language Options." Choose the "Languages" tab in the window that appears and click "Details" under "Text Services and Input Languages." Go to the "Advanced" tab in the new window that appears and check the box labeled "Turn off advanced text services." This will immediately close Ctfmon. Finally, go back to the "Settings" tab and verify the information under the heading "Installed Services." The first tier should read English (United States) followed by a second tier that reads "keyboard." followed by a third tier that reads "US." As long as there are no other services besides your keyboard, Ctfmon should never come back on. If you have any additional services installed, review whether you truly need them, and if not, remove them.

Here’s how to get rid of it on Windows Vista:

The process is similar to the steps taken in Windows XP, but since the layout is different, there’s a different route that must be taken. First, open your "Control Panel," and choose "Regional and Language Options." Find "Change keyboards or other input methods" which should bring up a new window. Choose the "Keyboards and Languages" tab and click "Change Keyboards." At this point, you should be at the same screen as in Windows XP. You’ll want to remove the extra installed services in the list other than your default keyboard language to make sure Ctfmon will never again activate.

To save your changes and to make sure Ctfmon will never again return, you need to alter your startup procedures. Go to "Run" in your startbar and enter "msconfig.exe" to open up a new window. Go to the "Startup" tab, and uncheck the box next to "ctfmon." After this, simply reboot your system to be completely Ctfmon free.

Windows Vista

I talked to my son John a few weeks ago and he was telling me that he was thinking about getting a new more powerful laptop computer for himself. Right now he has an almost one year old laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium and it just doesn't have the power that he wants. It has two gigs memory and a 383mb video card, and a 160gb hard drive. He also has two external hard drives that he uses for additional storage and an ipod. You can click here to see what he has now. I can understand him wanting a new one. John is a computer nut so to speak. He uses it for everything, music, movies, television, phone calls, programming, work and so on. Before John joined the Navy he was in college majoring in Computer Science and doing some tech support on the side. Usually he is doing several things with his computer at once and needs allot of power. "John is a power user".

Now, getting to my point, I have two desktop computers myself and my wife has one. My computers run Windows XP and Linux and my wife is using XP. I get allot of calls asking me for help with other peoples computers and since I don't have Vista I really can't help others that use that OS. John said that when he buys a new computer for himself that he would give me his current laptop. That will enable me to use and learn Vista. I am really excited by the prospect of owning a laptop with Vista. That would enable me to learn the OS and the flexibility to do work from other places besides my computer room/office. It will be nice to be able to sit in my living room in the recliner with my knees up instead of sitting here in my computer chair every time I want to do something with the computer. At the very least I'm sure that my blog will be updated more often when I get a laptop..... I'll let you know what he decides on when he finally buys a new computer, and thanks in advance John. :)

As a side note, I called my daughter Cindy but she was working and couldn't talk at the time. At least I know that she made it to Washington ok. :) I'm sure she will call me later when she has the time and I'll try to let you know what she is up to then.

Cindy bought another Laptop

My daughter Cindy just called from San Diego. She bought another Laptop from a person that she knew from her time at Navy FC A-School in Great Lakes. She got it for $300.00. It's an Everex Sa2052T with Windows Vista. It's less that a year old and still under warranty. The person that she bought it from formatted it and reinstalled the OS and other software for her. Her last Laptop had Windows XP Pro but was allot older and had several problems. She is now able to get online from her room in the barracks. :)

Internet Explorer 8 Download Site Up and Running

Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

Note, IE8 is still in Beta stage so only download if you know what you are doing. As for myself I will continue to use Firefox and Opera as my web browsers.

Link to the Internet Explorer 8 Download Site

More reading Below:


You also might want to read "Why Internet Explorer 8 might not pass the Acid2 test"


The Web Standards Project (WaSP) announced the release of Acid3, the latest in a line of tests designed to expose flaws in the implementation of mature Web standards in Web browsers.
Acid3 Test Released

Microsoft Vista Ad Video

This has been around for a while but it's still funny. Thanks for reminding me Cookie.

A few reasons not to rush into Windows Vista

I found these graphs and this chart on a few blogs and decided they were too good not to share.

Take a look at a quick graphical comparison of system requirements of various versions of MS Windows editions. Pay close attention to the Vista column on the graphs.

I should state that my son John has Windows Vista on his Laptop and has no real problems. He has an Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7700 (2.40 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB), 2GB DDR2 System Memory, and 383MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS video card.

The Choice is Windows XP over Windows Vista ( Video )

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

Chris Pirillo Gives an interesting read on Vista vs XP

Vista can run out of memory while copying files

It appears that Windows Vista can run out of memory while copying files. ZDNet is reporting that not only does it run out of memory after copying 16,400+ files, but that 'often there is little indication that file copy operations haven't completed correctly.' Apparently a fix was scheduled for SP1 but didn't make it; there is a hotfix that you must request.

Link to Microsoft Article ID 942435

Speed up Vista

I just read a good article over at Digital Journal on how to speed up Windows Vista. Since my sons new laptop computer has Vista I thought I would post this link here. The article gives allot of good advice a few of which are, Turn off indexing and Turn off UAC in Vista. The article also tells you how to do these things and more. Go on over and take a look.

Link to article.

How to change the location of the My Documents folder

How to change the location of the My Documents folder in Windows.

In my computer I have three hard drives. Having more than one hard drive is becoming more and more popular these days.

By default, the My Documents folder located in Windows XP and Windows Vista is located on the same drive or partition as the Windows operating system. This is fine for anyone who has only a single drive or a single partition on their computer, such as the C drive, but if you have more than one physical or logical drive on your computer, it’s probably a good idea to move your My Documents folder off the system drive.

* Reasons to move the My Documents folder

* Free up hard drive space on the system partition.

With all of the monthly updates for Office and Windows, your C drive might be getting close to full. Also, other system files like the paging file, system restore files, and hibernation files are all stored on the system partition. Once you move the My Documents folder data off, you will gave Windows more space to live and breathe.

* Easy backup and recovery of data in case of Windows crash

Another reason to move the My Documents folder is to better help protect your data. For example, if Windows crashes on you one day and you have to perform a reinstall, all of your data on the primary drive will be lost. However, if your data is on the D drive, let’s say, and your Windows on the C drive craps out, you can reinstall a fresh copy of Windows on the C drive and the rest of your data remains intact. Of course, this will not save your data if the entire hard drive fails physically and your My Documents folder is on the same drive, just in a different partition. But there have been many occasions that I've seen when Windows has become unusable due to a virus, spyware or other problem.

* How to move My Documents folder to a new location

* Moving your My Documents folder is actually a simple process and can be done by anyone.

1. Right-click on the My Documents folder and choose Properties

2. Click Move and choose the desired location for your My Documents folder. Remember, it would be best to move it to a different PHYSICAL drive if possible. If not, move it to a different partition at least.

3. Click Ok and then click Apply. You’ll be asked whether you want to move all of the current documents to the new location or not. Choose Yes.

That’s all there is to it. Your documents will be moved to the new location. When you click the My Documents icon on your desktop, it’ll open just as before but your documents will be stored in the new location that you chose.

It's been a slow day so far

It's been a slow day so far. I went and sent my son John at Great lakes Naval Base a package UPS with his 320GB external hard drive ( now fully loaded with his music and videos ) and also his digital camera, speakers, his mail and a few other things in the box. I also went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and went to Wal-Mart to get some over the counter meds that we needed.

The above picture is a screen shot using google earth of John's ship ( building ) on base at Great Lakes Naval Base. His building is marked with a yellow tack. Click image for larger view.

My son John called during his lunch today and sounded good. He is having some problems with Windows Vista on his new Laptop. One of the problems is easily fixed. What happened was that he tried to put some software on that was not fully compatible with Vista and his computer completely froze. He was finally able to do a system restore and everything is working fine now. He cant get the Laptop to recognize his cell phone via Bluetooth but it does find everyone else's Bluetooth enabled devices. Go figure. :) John said that he also can't get the built in webcam to work and he is going to call HP about that when he gets a chance. He thinks it might be a Vista compatibility problem also. Those issues not withstanding he likes the Laptop overall. He said that it is allot better that what he initially expected. He had a busy day yesterday on Watch with several people causing minor problems. I will talk to him tonight online when he is done with his classes. He is still working on his own Blog and will continue to update it as time allows. ( mostly on weekends ). That's all the news from here.

Free Software that I like

Free Software:

AVG free Antivirus

Windows Live Messenger

SMPlayer It's better than VLC media player and Media Player Classic. It's able to play the most known video & audio formats without the need of external codecs.

OpenOffice free office suite

GIMP GNU image manipulation program ( Like Adobe Photoshop, but Free )

Foobar2000 Great Free Media Player ( I like this better than Winamp, Itunes, and Windows Media Player )

Opera ( Probably the best Web Browser )

Firefox ( Another great Web Browser )

smartftp, the free secure FTP client for Windows

CCleaner CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool.

Linux Operating System ( Ready to dump windows? )

30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows

If that's not enough to get you started go to The Free Software Foundation ( Tons of Great Stuff Here )

Microsoft downplays stealth Windows Update

Microsoft has sought to downplay the recent, but unpublicized, automatic update of system files on Windows XP and Vista machines as "normal behavior."

A Microsoft spokesperson said, "Windows Update automatically updates itself from time to time to ensure that it is running the most current technology, so that it can check for updates and notify customers that new updates are available."

"The point of this explanation is not to suggest that we were as transparent as we could have been; to the contrary, people have told us that we should have been clearer on how Windows Update behaves when it updates itself," said Nate Clinton, Program Manager Windows Update, in a blog Friday.

For the curious, the updated files on Vista are:

* wuapi.dll
* wuapp.exe
* wuauclt.exe
* wuaueng.dll
* wucltux.dll
* wudriver.dll
* wups.dll
* wups2.dll
* wuwebv.dll

And on XP SP2:

* cdm.dll
* wuapi.dll
* wuauclt.exe
* wuaucpl.cpl
* wuaueng.dll
* wucltui.dll
* wups.dll
* wups2.dll
* wuweb.dll

All nine files are system files related to the XP and Vista versions of Windows Update (WU) itself.

Microsoft updates Windows without users consent

Microsoft has begun patching files on Windows XP and Vista without users knowledge, even when the users have turned off auto-updates.

In recent days, Windows Update (WU) started altering files on users' systems without displaying any dialog box to request permission. The only files that have been reportedly altered to date are nine small executables on XP and nine on Vista that are used by WU itself. Microsoft is patching these files silently, even if auto-updates have been disabled on a particular PC.

Read the entire article about this here.

I was talking to my son about this tonight and he said that when he went to the pharmacy on base today to get a prescription filled that the computers updated and restarted and it resulted in a delay. Now he won't be able to get his medicine until tomorrow.

Confirmed: Vista Bug Slows Network Traffic While Music Plays.

I just read this over at PC World's blog. I first read about it a week ago but was waiting on a follow-up and here it is.

A major Microsoft techie, today acknowledged a bug with Vista's network programming that can noticeably slow down file transfers on a local network if you play music at the same time.

No word yet on when we might expect a bug fix, so if you're copying a lot of data between Vista PCs at work or at home, you might want to turn off your tunes for the duration.

Go over to PC World and read the rest.

UPDATE: Read How To Fix the Vista Network Speed Issue While Playing Sound

Problems with Windows Genuine Advantage authentication

Yesterday I started reading reports on the Net about people experiencing problems with Windows Genuine Advantage authentication. Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were saying that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one person even said that his installation was invalidated by the service.

Sources at Microsoft say the company is aware of a major WGA server outage affecting users across the globe. The Windows Genuine Advantage support forum has exploded with complaints, as a result, and Phil Liu, WGA project manager, says that he won't sleep until the problem is fixed. Windows Vista and XP are affected, 32- and 64-bit versions.

Patches that Microsoft has planned for us next Tuesday

The updates will come as part of Microsoft's regular monthly security patch process, and will be made available to customers late Tuesday morning, Pacific time.

Less-serious updates are also being readied for Windows, Windows Vista, and Microsoft's Virtual PC and Virtual Server software, Microsoft said in a note on the upcoming patches, published Thursday.

With nine sets of patches, August will be a busy month for system administrators. Microsoft released just six updates in July, and has averaged around seven updates per month this year.

Here are the patches that Microsoft has planned for us next Tuesday:

* 6 CRITICAL patches - some of these will require a reboot

* 3 IMPORTANT patches - some of these will require a reboot

Microsoft is planning to release four non-security, high-priority updates on Microsoft Update and two non-security, high-priority updates for Windows on Windows Update.

Mozilla Fixes Firefox Bugs

Mozilla Corp. has released an update to its Firefox browser, fixing a number of security flaws in the product.

The Firefox 2.0.0.2 release includes a fix for a bug disclosed by security researcher Michal Zalewsky last week. That flaw can be exploited by attackers to manipulate cookie information in the Firefox browser, making it probably the most important fix in the update, according to Window Snyder, Mozilla's head of security strategy.

"The potential to compromise a user's account is almost as serious as compromising their machine," she said Friday via instant message. "Since the details of how to exploit the vulnerability are publicly available the risk to users is increased."

The updates also include a fix for a previously undisclosed memory corruption flaw in the browser that could be exploited to run unauthorized software on a Firefox user's computer.

This flaw could also affect Thunderbird users who have configured their mail client to run JavaScript automatically, something that Mozilla does not recommend. Thunderbird is Mozilla's free e-mail client.

The patches were released on Friday afternoon and should soon be delivered via Firefox's automatic software update mechanism, Snyder said.

Mozilla has patched a total of seven Firefox bugs and is also addressing two bugs in Thunderbird.

The latest browser release also includes enhancements to make it run better with Windows Vista as well as support for the Afrikaans, Belarusian, Georgian and Kurdish languages.