All Program Sharing between Windows Vista and XP
YOU CAN SHARE ALL YOUR PROGRAM SETTINGS this way!You dont get it read on u`ll come to know...What to do: (we'll assume XP is on C:Windows and Vista is on D:Windows. I suggest you go to Tools->View->Show Hidden Files and Folders before starting)
While on Vista, go to D:UsersYourVistaUserNameAppData
Right-click on Roaming and choose Properties
Choose the Location tab and click Move
Go to C:Documents and SettingsYourXPUserName. Choose Application Data and hit Select Folder
On "Would you like to rename...?", hit NoOn "Do you still want to proceed...?", hit YesOn "Would you like to move...?", hit No (not sure about the wording on this: it asks you if you want to move all the stuff from one folder to the other)
If you wish to share other folders like My Favorites and MyDocuments, please see the P.S. below now
Half-way there! Restart you computer and log onto XP this time. I suggest you Show Hidden Files and Folders here too.
CLOSE ALL PROGRAMS which may be using that folder (most programs probably are)
Cut and Paste all the stuff from D:UsersYourVistaUsernameAppDataRoaming into C:Documents and SettingsYourXPUserNameApplication Data
Carefully choose whether or not you want to overwrite files, especially folders. If you choose Yes, your Vista program settings will become available in XP and vice versa. Caution: your XP setting WILL BE ERASED.
Now, whenever you change anything in any program in XP, your changes will crarry on to Vista and vice versa!Good Luck: it should be pretty easy if you follow the directions ;)If anyone actually does this, please post it here. I'm dying to see if this will actually be helpfulP.S. Check out other files which have a Location tab.The reason we had to log onto XP to move the files is because windows is probably using the D:UsersYourVistaUserNameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindows folder. However, My Documents and folders like that are probably not in use, so you can hit Yes when it asks you "Would you like to move...blablablah?"These movable folders include but are not limited to:DesktopMy DocumentsMy FavoritesMy MusicMy Videosetc......which all have an equivalent at C:Documents and SettingsYourXPUserNameApplication DataLeave your Comments for Sure...
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4:17 PM
Windows Vista SP1: Create a recovery disc
.One of the new administrative tools Windows Vista Service Pack 1 provides is the ability to create a recovery disc. At first, the name might fool you into thinking the type of discs system manufacturers provide to you when you purchase a new computer to restore your computer to a factory state, but this is not that. A more appropriate name would be “Windows repair disc”.To be blunt, this tool creates merely a slimmed-down Windows installation disc. It takes a normal Windows installation disc image and strips out all the “installation” functionality leaving only the repair tools and common system files.What a lot of people don’t know (or need to know) is that their Windows Vista DVDs are in fact running Windows PE, an extremely lightweight version of Windows that can be booted from removable media for the purpose of system maintenance. Up until now, creating a Windows PE image was not an easy task. This tool basically simplifies it down to just two clicks.You can find the tool in the “Start menu” > “All programs” > “Maintenance” > “Create a Recovery Disc”. You will need either a blank CD or DVD along with your original Windows installation disc. It will take approximately 5 minutes to complete.If you boot this CD/DVD, it will look identical to your Windows installation disc. You will be asked to choose a language and even present you the “Install now” button. If you do decide to go on, you won’t get very far before an error stops you.To enter the Windows Recovery Environment, click the “Repair your computer” link at the bottom of the welcome screen and select the Windows partition you wish to repair. After this, it will present you with a list of options including startup repair, system restore and command prompt. This is identical to the repair screen you would see in your installation disk. From here, you can even do a literally last-minute backup by sticking in a USB flash drive and copy documents across. Because it runs Windows, most USB drivers are available and it’ll work out of the box.Because this is not an actual Windows install disk, it only takes up a few hundred MBs to fit on a CD, and you are free to make as many copies as you like and even share it with others. It’ll be even better if you can create a bootable USB version.
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4:54 PM
Excluding Directories From Vista's Built-In Backup
Vista's built-in backup utility can be very useful, but it's got some serious limitations. Here's how to get around one of the most annoying.Windows Vista's built-in backup utility is a love-or-hate thing: Some people swear by it, and some people swear at it. I do a little of both. The backup function has saved my skin at least twice since I started using Vista Ultimate, and once it's set up it runs with no baby-sitting. But it's so limited in some ways that I've had to engineer end runs around the program to use it effectively.Problem: You can't manually exclude directories from Vista's backup utility.
here's the single biggest annoyance I've had so far with Vista's backup function: It's not possible to manually exclude directories from the backup. If you select a drive for backup, everything on the drive barring system files is backed up. It's only possible to exclude file types, and even that's only possible to within a certain degree of granularity.
And yet what Vista's backup program does, it does well enough that I felt compelled to find ways to engineer an end-run around not being able to exclude directories from being backed up.
Solution #1: Move the files to another drive or partition.
This is the easiest solution, but also the most disruptive. Since Vista's backup tool works drive by drive, rather than folder by folder, the easiest solution is to simply move any data you don't want automatically backed up to another drive.
If you only have one drive or partition in the system, then this is not going to be of much help. One approach is to repartition an existing system drive into a system and data partition, and then move the folder(s) in question to that partition. I am not crazy about this approach for one simple reason: There is a fairly noticeable performance impact caused by forcing the head to move back and forth between two partitions on the same physical drive.
Also, while it's possible to resize partitions within Vista without rebooting (through the Disk Management console), because of the way the partition manager works you may not be able to use all of the available free space on the current partition for the new partition. To do that you'd need to turn to a third-party disk management tool, such as Boot-It Next Generation.
Solution #2: Move the files to a subfolder of the \Windows directory.
There's one supersneaky trick you can use to cheat the Vista backup tool. The one directory that does not get backed up is the \WINDOWS directory; that's left for the full-system backup tool to handle (assuming you can run that in your edition of Vista). Therefore, if you want to exclude a given directory from being backed up, simply make it a subset of the \WINDOWS directory and create a shortcut to that folder for easy access.
This isn't as dangerous as it sounds as long as you're careful not to overwrite or interfere with anything else in the \WINDOWS directory. I've been using this trick through several backup cycles on about 50 Gbytes of data, with no ill effects whatsoever.
Here's how I did it: I created a subdirectory in \WINDOWS named _My_Stuff (note the underscores) and moved everything I didn't want automatically backed up into that folder. I then created a shortcut to _My_Stuff from the desktop so I could jump into that folder quickly if I needed to. Finally -- and this part is optional but useful -- I changed the access permissions on _My_Stuff and everything below it so I could edit everything in those folders without triggering a UAC prompt or having to launch programs in admin mode. I did this by giving the Users group the following permissions over the folder: Read, Write, List Folder Contents, Read & Execute, and Modify. (You can also assign the same permissions to your own user account specifically if you'd rather not do it by user group.)
Obviously I don't recommend this to everyone. There are many people who are reluctant to tinker with their \WINDOWS directory, especially if they're making permissions changes, no matter what the excuse, since the permissions set on the \WINDOWS directory are there to help things like UAC work correctly. Also note that some antivirus/security products may object to your tinkering with the \WINDOWS directory.
Solution #3: Use another program for backup -- like NTBACKUP itself.
This is an obvious answer, but it's worth including here. If Vista's backup tool just isn't cutting it, there are always other programs, depending on what you need and can afford. This way you don't have to move files around or do any tricky stuff with the \WINDOWS directory.
One alternative: I use Microsofts own SyncToy to make manual backups from a few folders on one of my other internal drives to an external USB hard drive. SyncToy supports excluding folders and will perform incremental backup, and the backed-up files are just mirrors of the originals -- unlike NTBACKUP's monolithic and proprietary file format, there are no funny archive formats to figure out. It also has a number of other options for synchronizing between any two folders that makes it pretty indispensible to begin with -- and it's free.
One important thing SyncToy does not do is file versioning. If you want to recover an older version of a file, the only way to do that is through Vista's Previous Versions feature, where you can recover earlier editions of a file through Explorer. Also, the user interface for restoring previous versions of files is only available in Vista Business/Ultimate, which makes it that much less useful. I'm researching possible ways to make that interface available to Vista Home users as well, but so far I haven't found a way to do it.
Another possible solution is -- surprise, surprise -- to run NTBACKUP, the old Windows 2000/XP backup application, in Windows Vista. However, this is only possible if you have a running copy of Windows XP somewhere, since you'll need to copy several files from that Windows installation to your Vista installation. Using the NTBACKUP.MSI installer alone (from the XP Home installation disc), for instance, will not do the job. Daniel Petri has created a tutorial that explains how to copy the files and set everything up.
Some notes on using NTBACKUP in Vista: First, NTBACKUP needs to be run as admin for it to work properly. Second, you should only use NTBACKUP for file backups and not try to back up or restore the System State. Finally, scheduling backup jobs through the program's own scheduling interface doesn't seem to work properly. You'll have to schedule such jobs through Vista's Task Scheduler to make them useful, using NTBACKUP's command-line options, and ensure that NTBACKUP runs as administrator there, too.
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3:05 PM
What we want to see in Internet Explorer version 8.
Its no secret that Microsoft is working on the next version of the Company's web browser. The expected release date is not until 2008, but I'm sure the IE Team is taking feedback in some form, internally or through select feedback externally. So in accordance with this weeks MIX Conference, here is a list of improvements I wouldn't mind seeing in a future version of the web browser.
Download Manager - trust me, it needs it, I find it very handy in FireFox and Safari - Pause/Resume, Manage.
Improved UI, for example, make the Search dialog an integrated one that appears as a contextual bar when the CTRL + F command is used, just remove some Dialogs in general, whether its adding Favorites or Feeds.
Non-adjacent Selection of text on web pages.
Phishing Filter with better performance please and less service not available errors.
Speaking of performance, I honestly have to say, FireFox 2.0 is faster than IE 7 and I got the Internet connection to prove it, Google.com loads 10x faster in FF than IE 7. This was tested on a Cell Phone modem connection at 0.6 KBs per second.
Customizable toolbar, I personally wouldn't mind if buttons such as Home, Feeds, Print, Page, Tools and Help were on a another toolbar group such as the Address bar group, I need more real estate for Tab's that's much cleaner.
Hide Tabs I don't need, but don't want to close.
Ability to right click a link with the option on the context menu to make it the foreground tab (a feature of Windows Live Toolbar).
Ability to select a URL from the Address Bar list and click delete, and have contextual menu options.
Built in list of popular search engines, I don't want to go to a web page and do the selection, just have it ready out of the box.
Zoom Slider on the Status Bar - I just want to reduce clicking.
List View layout for Options, similar to Office 2007 Options dialog. Also make the Advance settings a part of the list view Options, this includes: Accessibility, Browsing, International, Multimedia.
Better roaming capabilities that are dynamic and browser agnostic where possible.
Thumbnail preview of Tab without clicking it, I'm still not sure about this one, but could be an optional feature or an extension. But, a thumbnail preview in Tab list would be nice.
Make Print Preview utilize a Tab instead of opening a separate window.
Drag a tab window into separate IE 8 window.
Number list view in History, I can't tell currently which page from which web page was opened first or last.
This is only some of the features I could come up with off the top of my head. If you have any ideas, just post them in the comments, I would like to hear them. :)
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2:56 PM
Microsoft Silverlight DreamScenes for your desktop!
In celebration of Silverlight at MIX07 this week (and the upcoming launch of their new website) – the wonderful folks on the Silverlight Team have released a slick looking new DreamScene for your Windows Vista Ultimate desktop. Their new website is due to go live at www.microsoft.com/silverlight tomorrow which will include the DreamScene downloads.
The DreamScene is called “Dusk” and can be downloaded in two formats (Standard or Widescreen):
Download: Microsoft Silverlight “Dusk” DreamScene (Standard)Download: Microsoft Silverlight “Dusk” DreamScene (Widescreen)
Video: Microsoft Silverlight "Dusk" DreamScene
In order to enable these DreamScenes, you must have Windows Vista Ultimate and have installed the Windows DreamScene Technical Preview which is under Ultimate Extras in Windows Update. To install the DreamScenes, just right-click on the above download links and save them to your Videos folder. Then right-click on your desktop, go to Personalize and then Desktop Background and under Location choose your Videos folder and select the new Silverlight DreamScene.
Source: windowsvistablog
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2:47 PM
Microsoft Releases v2 Extender Vista Update
Microsoft has gotten one step closer to getting v2 Extenders going on Windows Vista. The followup update will be needed before you connect your new v2 Extender to your Vista-based PC.
More information on Extenders should be coming on the 27th at the keynote for DigitalLife.
“Install this update to enable new types of Windows Media Center Extenders, such as digital televisions and networked DVD players, to connect to the Windows Media Center PC. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer”. (x86/x64)
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2:43 PM
Will Vista be Remembered like Windows ME?
Windows ME is something Microsoft would probably rather forget. While some of its more interesting technology made it into XP (file recovery/snapshots, for example), the OS was pretty much a marketing and user disaster. At the time, most enthusiasts who wanted to stick with Microsoft kept Windows 98 for games and did real work on Windows 2000. Most people who had ME had it only because their machine came with it installed.
Will Windows Vista be the same? There's lots of roughness around the edges (well ok, the whole thing is like 60 grit sandpaper glued to a rock), it's a real pig on the workstation, isn't compatible with enough hardware/software to eliminate the pain of installing it, and frankly can be a real pain to use. I use Vista on my work laptop (and have since some of the betas) and XP on my home workstation and find myself far more productive on XP despite a serious attempt to get into Vista (I live new and shiny and have always loved trying out new user interfaces)
However, for some reason, the navigation for the new windows explorer/file manager bit (the treeview on the left) just hasn't clicked for me. That's pretty rough, as I spend almost as much time in Windows explorer as I do in any other application. Thinking about it from a user experience standpoint, I can find a few reasons why that is likely the case:
The hierarchy isn't immediately clear. The indentation isn't enough to point that out with a quick glance, the arrows don't always show (depending on where you are), and there are no lines. It may look "cleaner" but it is harder to use.
I upgraded the machine from Windows XP, so there are lots of folders with shortcut icons that I am simply not allowed to click (My Music, My Pictures, for example, both give "access denied" errors. If those aren't shortcuts, MSFT shouldn't have used the shortcut icon
After 15 years, why change folders from yellow to green, and then do it only in some places? Keep the folders yellow. Consistency is one of the more important rules of UX design
Along the same lines, the Vista icons are all too similar to be able to quickly discern. It seems like someone at MSFT thought a theme would be more important than actual usability.
Expand/collapse icons (the little triangles that were a variation of the plus sign for the last 15 years) don't always show up, so you can't mentally process the hierarchy efficiently. Oh, did I mention that consistency is good?
Favorite Links move around. Things tend to move off that list without me taking any explicit action to remove them. Looks like a bug, or a really ill-conceived "personalization"-type of function
This got really annoying when VS 2008 forced its own Projects folder into the favorites when I already had c:\Projects (keeping it in the root has avoided issues with paths that are too long when stored under documents and settings\username\projects) and I couldn't tell which was which. Somehow through use, mine got bumped to the drop-down and the VS one was shown up top.
Clutter. The explorer window is just way too cluttered. There are six different and distinct regions vying for your attention at any given time, and due to the colors, contrast etc. they all try to outpop each other to stay in the foreground.
Sure, bugs can and likely will be fixed. Design flaws are a bigger issue. This isn't just about resistance to change (I've embraced most changes in the past), but resistance to change for the worse.
There's lots of other annoying stuff in Vista with UAC being at the top. One of these days, Microsoft will provide an install option like "I'm a developer" or "This is not my grandma's PC" so you can eliminate a lot of the in-your-face fluff (run Visual Studio for the first time and you are prompted to tell it the type of developer you are; the concept is not new). I originally thought UAC would be annoying only during the initial install, but when you develop and debug applications on Vista, it tends to get in your face all the time. Microsoft's developer tools are top notch, but they always seem hampered by operating systems that try be everything for everyone, with no easy way to do different installs for different classes of users.
Memory is another issue. Vista uses a huge amount of memory just in normal operation. That's usually not a big deal, but due to the recent trend towards SharePoint development, and the inability to run most IIS6 apps on IIS7 (that comes with Vista) without serious configuration changes, we find ourselves running Virtual PC instances with Windows Server 2003. On XP, you can do that with 2gig - the limit many laptops have before you can no longer install memory, or it gets crazy expensive to install more - with Vista, we need to go to 3 or 4 gigs (well, 3.5 as Vista won't see all 4 gigs, like most 32 bit OSes). I tried running a VPC on Vista on a 2 gig laptop and the experience was beyond painful. You can turn off all the eye candy, but that doesn't make enough of an impact to make it all better.
Using Vista is like riding a theme park motion ride that is slightly out of sync with the video. You can tell something is wrong, and you feel a little sick, but you can hang in there if needed.
I'll likely never get a Mac - I just have too much software, knowledge, and development experience tied up on Windows, but whenever I look at the Mac UI I find myself drooling a bit. Perhaps the shine would wear off after some use, but the Mac UI just looks crisper, cleaner, friendlier, and generally easier to use. Sometimes I think Microsoft User Experience designers looked at the other operating systems out there and snagged what they thought was "cool" without trying to get the underlying psychology worked out first.
I'll probably put Vista on the home PC (the kiosk that will be in the kitchen) as the UI will be almost exclusively my WPF kitchen kiosk application. Vista brings a few good things to the table for that, and the Vista UI won't get in the way.
I'm not ready to completely write off Vista yet, but I haven't moved my home workstation to Vista, even though I have a free license of Vista Ultimate from MIX sitting in a box next to me. Considering that I stood in line on the day Windows 95 was released (and also got Pitfall - one of the first Windows 95 games), I think I can say that my enthusiasm has defiitely waned. Sure, after I have had to work with it for another year and have no other choice, I'll make my peace with Vista, but it will be more like that fake peace like seeing an ex girlfriend in the supermarket and pretending to be civil to each other when you know you're both going to walk away and talk about how old/fat/ugly/poor the other person got since you last saw them :)
In the end, the cool stuff from Vista (live previews, 3d application switching, having a copy/move function that doesn't die halfway through due to a locked file etc.) will likely make it into v.next, but I would expect to see (and would like to see) a good chunk of Vista's clunky UI and code just fade away. Will Vista be remembered like Windows ME? Let's hope it gets forgotten like it, at least.
