This article describes how to customize the new Tools tab that is available in the System Configuration tool (Msconfig.exe) in Windows Vista. Keep reading →

• DailyTech - NVIDIA Drivers Caused Lions Share of Early Vista Crashes
  Nvidia caused almost a third of the crashes in early Vista setups.
  (tags: Nvidia Crash Drivers )
• Troubleshoot installation problems with Director 11
  If you’re installing Adobe Director 11 on your Vista machine, there are many potential issues you might face. This document describes some of them, and how to get around them.
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This article describes how to use the System Configuration utility (Msconfig.exe) to troubleshoot configuration errors that might prevent Windows Vista from starting correctly. Keep reading →

You have a computer on which Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) is installed on the main partition. On this computer, you install Windows Vista on a different partition. Then, you try to use the System Configuration Utility (Msconfig.exe) in Windows Vista to remove or change the Windows XP startup option. However, the option is unavailable. You expect the option to be available on the Boot tab of the utility.

This problem does not occur if you install Windows Vista on both partitions.

When you start Windows Vista, you receive the following error message:

File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc0000034
Info: The Windows Boot Configuration Data file is missing required information

When you try to upgrade an earlier version of a Microsoft Windows operating system to Windows Vista, you receive the following error message:

Windows could not update the computer’s boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed.

If you examine the contents of the drive:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setupact.log file that Windows Vista creates, you notice the following information:

<date> <time>, Info       [0x060216] IBS    CallBack_MungeBootIni:Failed to modify boot entries GLE = 50

In this log entry, GLE error code 50 corresponds to the following error message:

ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED

Note: Generally, drive is drive C on the computer. However, Windows Vista creates the temporary installation folder depending on many factors. Therefore, this drive may be any supported drive that Windows Vista detects.

The typical non-technical computer user doesn’t want to see extra information about what the computer is doing as it will probably just confuse them. That’s why modern OS’s hide most of what’s going on underneath and just show pretty pictures and allow users to point and click on things. The more technical users, often called Geeks (I put myself in this category) like to type in commands, and see what is going on behind the scene. What better way to display your Geekness, and impress your friends with your technical prowess than to have your computers boot screen scrolling all kinds of technical information? Keep reading →

In my article “Dynamic Disc: Microsoft’s Bastard Child?” I noted how you might upgrade a computer from Windows XP to Vista, only to then find that you cannot access a dynamic disc. This is most likely due to your version of Vista not supporting dynamic disk, which would require upgrading, probably to Ultimate, to be able to read the disc. If you’re not prepared to do that, but still want to be able to use the disk, you can convert it back to a basic disk. The draw back is that you will loose all of your data, since the process is to first delete the volume, then recreate it from scratch. The next tip will include instructions on how to hack your dynamic disc back to a basic disk, which may save your data, but only if your dynamic disk doesn’t span multiple disks. Keep reading →

I‘ve been using Vista for a while now, and the fancy Aero transparency is really no big deal. I’ve seen a number of sources that say it doesn’t slow down your system, so you probably don’t need to disable it in the interest of increasing performance. If you just don’t like the way it looks, Tech-Recipes suggests it is something you can disable. Keep reading →

One of my colleague mentioned he didn’t like ClearType in the new IE7, the same ClearType that’s on by default in Vista. I don’t mind it myself, but if you find it to be ‘blurry’, or just don’t want it on, you can disable it. Keep reading →