More Vista nonsense

[Chewy509]

Should I buy up a bnuch of XP OS and office 2003 now?

The IT Company I work for, will continue to sell WinXP for at least another 12-18 months, providing we can still get licenses/media.

We have no plans for supporting Vista initially until April. (One advantage of only servicing a single vertical market).

 

[LOST6200]

thanks,. I'm just wiondering if they will stil be in stokc, i.e., does MS stop procuding the old OSs and Offices after new ones are out?

 

[Mercutio]

Tier-1 OEMs have stopped shipping PCs with XP, mostly.

But on the other hand, I can still get a shrinkwrapped Win95 license if I really want one, and my local Office Max still has a couple copies of Windows 2000 in stock. I think you'll be fine.

 

[LOST6200]

Tier-1 OEMs have stopped shipping PCs with XP, mostly.

But on the other hand, I can still get a shrinkwrapped Win95 license if I really want one, and my local Office Max still has a couple copies of Windows 2000 in stock. I think you'll be fine.

Thanks. But waht do busineses do then, just buy licences? The places I work with take about 2-3 yers to get a new OS cretfied for use. Itsa lengthy, beuarcratic process. For the consumper verisions, will MS keep activationign old unused XP OS forever, or someday f*ck you?

 

[Chewy509]

For the consumper verisions, will MS keep activationign old unused XP OS forever, or someday f*ck you?

MS has said that when main-stream support for XP ceases (IIRC 2010 or 2011), they'll release a patch that deactivates the activation process, or alternatively just activate any request without any checks... Whether they follow through with it, we'll just have to wait and see...

 

[fb]

The Vista high points.

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37394

 

[RWIndiana]

The Vista high points.

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37394

That did give me a few chuckles. Love the sarcasm.

 

[Clocker]

Use the Vista upgrade and do a full/fresh install w/o having XP...

http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/...install_glitch_could_save_hundreds_of_dollars

 

[Tannin]

I have to install Vista on a customer's machine on Wednesday. It's starting already .....

sigh

 

[Mercutio]

Hey, you got almost a week more than I did!

Anyway, my RC2 key worked to install Vista on a retail disc install. I don't know whether that counts against my total activations or anything else, but I installed it on a test PC and it seems to be OK.

 

[Mercutio]

Turns out, Vista's Firewall is completely retarded.

I'm guessing this is partly because it overlaps with something OneCare does?

 

[Bozo]

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070206/more-vista-exploits/

More security holes.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Mercutio]

The copy of TrueImage I have does not work with Vista. So I booted my WinPE that has TrueImage installed and imaged my Vista install that way.

I messed with it a bit, trying to install some other software that might not be compatible (it wasn't) then booted back to WinPE to restore my image.

When I brought the system back up from a disk restore it told me that I had to repair my Windows install. I do not know why, and it didn't take very long to do once I found my install DVD, but I'm still not sure why it happened.

I tried it again and it did the same thing.
That's going to be something of a headache if I want to use Vista on my lab PCs.

 

[sechs]

GUIDs?

 

[Mercutio]

Shouldn't be an issue since there's no change in hardware or files on the same. From Vista's standpoint it should be just like I shut it down and restarted it; I restored (as far as I know) the exact contents of the hard disk.

 

[Mercutio]

OK.
I've got Ultimate installed on a few things. Fully half the programs I've tried to install don't work. Vista is using more RAM than most of my computers had four years ago just sitting at an idle desktop. It prompts me for an administrator password to change a mouse pointer and the hugest hardware vendors in three different categories (nvidia, Creative and Logitech) can't supply proper drivers for it.
For that I get: The Sidebar (Yahoo Widgets), instant search (Google Desktop Search) and Mahjonng (Eleventy billion freeware versions). Oh, and Virtual PC (VMware Server).

If I run Aero and visit a web page that uses Java, I don't get Aero any more.

There is no test, anyplace, that shows Vista is actually faster than 32-bit XP (let alone my normal 2003 Server) at doing anything.

I've already had to repair the same Vista install three times just from testing software.

The firewall is so insecure that it can't even manage rule #1 for every firewall ever: Deny all incoming traffic EXCEPT...

Vista can actually KILL an iPod in its current form (seriously, iPod owners are complaining that Vista is corrupting their firmware) and it supports types of DRM that even Media companies don't have the balls to actually implement yet.

What's the benefit to installing this piece of crap, again?

 

[Clocker]

You will make $ supporting it.

 

[sechs]

Shouldn't be an issue since there's no change in hardware or files on the same. From Vista's standpoint it should be just like I shut it down and restarted it; I restored (as far as I know) the exact contents of the hard disk.

If you don't pull *all* of the data off of the disk, including the boot sector, your volume GUID can get horked. This shouldn't, but sometimes does confuse Windows.

And, well, this is Vista. Why should things make sense?

 

[Mercutio]

I did a full disk restore, sechs. I said that already. Full disk including boot sector.

 

[Tannin]

Turns out, Vista's Firewall is completely retarded.

I think that article is complete crap. Show me a hom user who is competent to manage an outbound firewall. Hell, I don't know what half the apps that legitimately send stuff out are and have to think hard sometimes, do research here and there. Expecting an end user to do that is a joke. Microsoft are a lot closer to correct on this one than that Cnet article is.

 

[Sol]

I agree... If an average user needs to block outbound traffic then they're already screwed. If I need to do it I'll spot the problem without a firewall in only a little less time.

As far as I'm concerned out bound firewalls have almost no legitimate uses outside of a corporate network.

I think in the article the MS reps point is perfectly valid. If you bug the shit out of people asking them to click allow all the time then they very quickly stop asking what they're allowing. All the end user knows is that if they click deny something generally breaks.

 

[Will Rickards]

Here's what I think MS should have done. Or maybe it is just a random idea.

Make every app that wants to connect to the internet opt in when it is installed. Some sort of registry key which says you need to connect to the internet and on what ports. The user can agree to this during install as MS should pop-up a message then that this app is requesting internet privileges, allow or deny. Then by default anything not in that registry is denied. When MS installs vista it can authorize itself without asking the user.

This way you get default block. You get pop-ups when they should happen - during application install time.

As for out of the box experience, vendors could register with MS to get their older apps included in this list that would ship with vista. MS could verify the program is not malicious and add it. That way those who register would get great out of the box experience, it just works. Those that don't probably aren't maintaining the old applications and deserver a bad out of box experience on vista.

 

[Tannin]

Will, that's brilliant. Why didn't I think of it? More to the point, why didn't Microsoft think of it - they have enough programmers working away, surely one of them has a clue?

Nope, instead we get different wallpaper called Aero.

sigh

 

[Will Rickards]

deserver

Normally I leave my errors in post alone but.... that just sounds bad.

 

[ddrueding]

But if you buy Ultimate it comes with a Texas Hold'em Poker game!

 

[Sol]

Texas Hold'em and Mahjong? How will people know what to play first...?

 

[mubs]

M$S Support.

 

[Bozo]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=29

Bozo :joker:

 

[Mercutio]

I've found something interested WRT getting an activationless copy of Vista:

For certain motherboards from Gigabyte, DFI, Abit, and Asus, there exist a BIOS hack which, when used in combination with a set of certificate files, mark your PC as a vomit-box OEM machine (Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo) that does not need internet-based product activation.

Yes, it's awfully stupid to use a hacked BIOS on a motherboard. But I'm surprised at the novelty of the hack and I'm sure it will be very interesting to see what, if any, steps Microsoft can take to circumvent it.

 

[ddrueding]

That is an interesting approach. Thanks for the tip Merc.

 

[LiamC]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37941

..."
It is a simple brute force attack, dumb as a rock that just tries keys. If it gets one, you manually have to check it and try activation. Is is ugly, takes hours, is far from point and click, but it is said to work. I don't have any Vista installs because of the anti-user licensing so I have not tested it personally.
The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, and I hope it will, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people"...

Here we go again.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm just afraid of how long the next release of keys will be. I already hate keying the damn things in. Besides, with activation, there should be a way to not require keys at all, no?

 

[ddrueding]

Did it. I went to Vista.

My new primary machine (see sig) is running Vista Ultimate 32-bit and Office 2007. Now I have no choice but to learn this crap.

BTW Merc: The 32-bit only Vista driver for the Auzentech X-Plosion seems to be working fine in SPDIF mode.

 

[ddrueding]

For the record, no flash drive that is visible when empty can be used for readyboost. It needs to be a device that appears and disappears entirely. So my idea of using an IDE-mounted adapter for some fast compact flash won't work.

Stupid, but this is Microsoft, and version 1.0 of the technology...

 

[cquinn]

For the record, no flash drive that is visible when empty can be used for readyboost. It needs to be a device that appears and disappears entirely. So my idea of using an IDE-mounted adapter for some fast compact flash won't work.

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but I just checked and was able to initialize readyboost on a flash drive that was already plugged in at bootup.

Asus is also selling a motherboard with a NAND flash module attached
(http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q1/asus-vistaedition/index.x?pg=1) to do something similar to your idea.

 

[ddrueding]

I read an interview with the guy @ MS in charge of Readyboost (I forget where) that if the drive is assigned a letter even if there is no media in it that it is ineligible to be used for readyboost. It also must be over 250MB and under 64GB. The readyboost portion will never be over 4GB regardless of the size of the media, and that you can only readyboost-enable one device at a time.

 

[Mercutio]

For what it's worth, the 2/10/07 Longhorn Server not only can't read spanned or striped dynamic volumes created in earlier versions of Windows, but it appears to hose them bad enough that I had to break out some data recovery software to see where my stuff went.

Also, RAM usage in Longhorn Server is 100% identical to Vista, even without Aero and Windows Defender and all that other desktop crap running. 489MB on Longhorm vs. 498 on the last clean Vista install I looked at.

I am thinking I'll just stick with Server 2003.

 

[Adcadet]

I read an interview with the guy @ MS in charge of Readyboost (I forget where) that if the drive is assigned a letter even if there is no media in it that it is ineligible to be used for readyboost. It also must be over 250MB and under 64GB. The readyboost portion will never be over 4GB regardless of the size of the media, and that you can only readyboost-enable one device at a time.

I saw a video interview with that guy. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of. The guy from MS sounded reasonable; the interviewer seemed like a stupid 15 year old kid.

 

[sechs]

Vista apparently won't boot on my computer because of a "fix" in the ACPI code. My motherboard is EOLed and no BIOS work around will come out.

Way to go Microsoft!

 

[Chewy509]

Vista apparently won't boot on my computer because of a "fix" in the ACPI code. My motherboard is EOLed and no BIOS work around will come out.
Way to go Microsoft!

I was going to go Vista on my home box, but alas no drivers from either AMD or MS for my Chipset. (Well, I could use legacy generic chipset drivers, but that would mean no AGP/PCI-X only PCI). :crap:

Guess, I'll just stick with WinXP x64 and FreeBSD 6.x.

PS. Tyan K8W with AMD-8000 series chipset (AMD-8151 AGP-HT Tunnel, AMD-8131 PCI-X and AMD-8111 southbridge). The board is still supported by Tyan and the AMD-8000 series chipset isn't EOL until 2008! :crap: