Windows Vista Discussion Thread

[harry10]

HI,
Can anyone suggest me how to lock the Folders on Windows Vista so noone else can see them. Any softwares etc?

[SLK]

simplest form is the zipfile. Use a password protected zip.
Else just google, and you'll get others.

[gendarmee]

I have a problem with windows vista.
Someone changed the regular task manager to a more detailed one a couple of months back,says that it'd be much better.Since 2 weeks a message," win>sys32>taskmngr.exe path doesn't exist" error msg shows up with I right click the task bar for task manager, any way i could restore it?
ctrl-alt-del doesnt get me the task manager either.
I tried running cmd, but it asked for an admin account while theres only one account on the comp..

[vinayvtec]

Are you getting

"taskmgr.exe - Error of application
The instruction in 0x007617e1 Make reference to the memory in 0x007617e1. The memory can't written..." Message?

Did you try using the Vista CD and try doing start up repair?

gendarmee, you can try doing even system restore but that will fix only 1 in 100 cases, this error message is shown up when the taskmgr.exe is hijacked by spyware. The registry of the windows will be misguided, if the start up repair or the system restore is not fixing this issue the you need to reinstall the OS.

[pranavt]

A little unrelated, but you can use Process Explorer instead. Much better and can replace taskman for Ctrl+Alt+Del keystrokes..

[gendarmee]

Originally Posted by vinayvtec

Are you getting

"taskmgr.exe - Error of application
The instruction in 0x007617e1 Make reference to the memory in 0x007617e1. The memory can't written..." Message?

Did you try using the Vista CD and try doing start up repair?

gendarmee, you can try doing even system restore but that will fix only 1 in 100 cases, this error message is shown up when the taskmgr.exe is hijacked by spyware. The registry of the windows will be misguided, if the start up repair or the system restore is not fixing this issue the you need to reinstall the OS.

The error msg that shows up is " Cannot find path C drive>windows>sys32>tasmngr.exe "
Its a HP laptop, it came with pre loaded windows...will system restore just restore the settings or even the newer data?
I sparingly use the laptop, thats because im more comfortable with the desktop, spyware couldn't have come onto the sys because i've never used it for internet.

Originally Posted by pranavt

A little unrelated, but you can use Process Explorer instead. Much better and can replace taskman for Ctrl+Alt+Del keystrokes..

Looks good enough, if the task manager doesnt get fixed.


one more off topic doubt, how much would new XP pro cost?
one quoted 15K and another ~4K, what would be a good price?

[aaggoswami]

I dont know if this is correct place, but would like to put up my experience here. I recently acquired Windows Vista home Basic SP1 for my PC. Cost was Rs 4500.
Everything went of smooth till I finished installation of OS.
1) Genuine Visual Studio wont install.
2) Genuine 3DS MAX 2009 wont install.
3) Only the internet worked properly.
4) Boot up time increased from approx 25 seconds raw ( just after the installation of OS ) of XP to 35 seconds in Vista.
5) The Vista score of my PC is 4.0.
6) Didnt like complex things. A file folder view is very bad. I dont want to see a folder open or is containing something or not. Its just trying to be too good and oversmart.
7) Came back to XP next day. Everything installs properly and the PC is faster.
8) I would recommend Vista to those who have atleast 4GB 800MHz DDR2 or atleast 4GB 1066 DDR3 RAM, 3.0Ghz or higher atleast dual core processor and a high end motherboard.
9) I dont know where was boot.ini file. I wanted to modify it.
10) I had a tough time finding the run menu. Thankfully the " windows button + r " worked.
11) My Acer BU 3300 USB scanner was not detected. It is detected in XP. The installation drivers that came with scanner are for windows 95/98 only. So backward compatibility is absent in Vista.

[ballkey]

Curious. I use Vista Enterprise, on a coreduo, 1GB machine.(office comp). Has a score of 2.3.

Disabled UAC, Aero and Search .
Runs well now. Visual Studio 2k8, office 2k7, and the whole lot.
Works with assorted USB drives, my BSNL evdo modem, and other funkier devices. Another GB of RAM, and she'd fly. But gah :(

[aaggoswami]

Originally Posted by ballkey

Curious. I use Vista Enterprise, on a coreduo, 1GB machine.(office comp). Has a score of 2.3.

Disabled UAC, Aero and Search .
Runs well now. Visual Studio 2k8, office 2k7, and the whole lot.
Works with assorted USB drives, my BSNL evdo modem, and other funkier devices. Another GB of RAM, and she'd fly. But gah :(

My machine as 3 GB 667 DDR2 RAM operating at 400 MHz and AMD Athlon X2 5000+, brisbane core running at 2.8 GHz.
I am not happy with this. All the expensive and latest things run, but the old one.
If I use Vista, then my scanner will be disabled.
But what really puts me off is the poor system response and the font below the folder indications is very irritating. What all I see is a huge folder icon. Readability is poor. Is all about graphics and nothing else.
I dont like the Aero interface and rather I am used to ALT + Tab.

[vikram_d]

This post maybe OT here but I have a small doubt. I would like to make my HP TX 1301 laptop dual boot with Win XP & Vista. I want to do a very minimal install of XP. My primary OS will remain Vista. I just need XP so that I can use it to tune the RD ECU in my car. It will serve absolutely no other purpose. What i would like to know is what is the minimum HDD space required to install XP. I will create two partitions on my HDD and install XP on one and Vista on the other. For the XP partition it will just be bare install with absolutely no extras installed. Not even anti-virus as I will disable the network in XP. The version of XP I have is XP Pro.

PS: I cannot get Vista to talk to the RD ECU a the USb drivers for vista dont work with that ECU.

[vivekiny2k]

I think I remember seeing around 1800 MB on a fresh install of XP. 3 GB should be good enough keeping in mind the swap file requirements.

Also, did you try running the program in XP compatibility mode?

[vivekiny2k]

Here is a problem of my own. sometimes (yes, I can't get to replicate this problem at will), my CPU starts running high, and I see system idle process hogging the CPU. I can not do anything but shut down the laptop and restart.

Here is a screen shot. Does anybody know how to fix it?

[vikram_d]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

I think I remember seeing around 1800 MB on a fresh install of XP. 3 GB should be good enough keeping in mind the swap file requirements.

Also, did you try running the program in XP compatibility mode?

Yes I tried running it XP compatibility mode. The GUI portion runs fine even in Vista mode but the I think Vista handles the USB drivers in a different way when compared to XP.

The main problem is that the RD ECU has a serial port and I have to use a Serial - USB converter. This converter works fine on XP but it does not connect to the ECU in Vista even with the latest Vista drivers. Also tried all baud rate settings for the port but no luck. So I thought it will be easier to have a minimal install of XP Pro and use it for tuning.

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

Here is a problem of my own. sometimes (yes, I can't get to replicate this problem at will), my CPU starts running high, and I see system idle process hogging the CPU. I can not do anything but shut down the laptop and restart.

Here is a screen shot. Does anybody know how to fix it?

The system idle process cannot lock up your system. It has to be some other process which is causing your system to hang.

Source - System Idle Process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Windows NT operating systems, the System Idle Process is a kernel thread which runs when no other runnable thread can be scheduled on a CPU. For example, there may be no runnable thread in the system, or all runnable threads are already running on a different CPU.
The System Idle Process is used by Windows NT to implement CPU power saving. The exact power saving scheme depends on the hardware and firmware capabilities of the system in question. For instance, on x86 processors, the process will run a loop of HLT instructions, which causes the CPU to turn off many internal components and wait until an IRQ arrives.
The CPU time consumed by the System Idle Process is commonly of interest for end users, as it is a measure of the CPU utilization in their system which is easily accessible through Windows' Task Manager program. There are, however, more detailed sources of such information available through Windows' performance monitoring system (accessible with the perfmon program), which includes more finely grained categorization of CPU time spending. A limited subset of the CPU time categorization is also accessible through the Task Manager, which can display CPU usage by CPU, and categorized by time spent in user vs. kernel code. It should be noted, though, that that information is not calculated from information about the System Idle Process, but from the system's global performance counters.

[anandtheleo]

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Vista(64 bit) home premium pre-installed, my problem is that often my Explorer hangs and I have to restart it.

It's mainly the task bar which shows the symptom, i.e task bar does not respond and when I right click the task bar, it asks me whether I need to restart the explorer and when I click 'yes' it starts(restarts) to work fine.

This hang-up is quiet random and I have not been able to identify the cause. Have tried 'googling' but no luck. Any help would be appreciated.

[neon_daytona]

I got a new laptop Acer 5735-4624 with Windows Vista Home premium, 2GB ram. I tried playing a movie file in WMP and there is a message "System is low on memory close other applications". There is not even a single other application running(Apart from what are started along with the boot up).

Acer support asked me to increase the Virtual memory to 3000mb.
That did not help?

Any suggestions on what could be the issue?

-Shashi